v ai 3
llililislisilll
:
;H!$!!ft!: \ ; '
iiiipiiiii
Illilisllilll
I
• ::
: : i
■
: 111
lliillfi
Bronze Statue or Robert E. Lee, by Skrady and LentElli,
Unveiled at Charlottesville, May 21, 1924
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
37 th Annual Reunion of the Virginia
Division of the Grand Camp
U Q V.
AND OF THE
29th Reunion of the Sons of
Confederate Veterans
AT CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. .
May 20, 21, 22, 1924
Compiled and Edited by
JOHN S. PATTON
R. T. W. Duke Camp, S. C. V.
Committee on Publication
C. B, Linney, Hollis Rinehart, T. E. Powers, B. F. Dickerson
THE UBRAR.Y
THE UNIVERSITY
OF TEXAS
D
REUNION COMMITTEES
General Committee, Homer Richey, Chairman.
From John Bowie Strange Camp, U. C. V. : C. B. Linney,
S. J. Moss, Capt. H. Clay Michie, W. H. Wolfe, W. R. Duke.
From Albemarle Chapter, U. D. C, No. 1 : Mrs. Glassell
Fitzhugh, Mrs. Lawson M. Turner, Mrs. Richmond Minor,
Miss Sallie J. Doswell, Mrs. Fred W. Twyman, Mrs. James E.
Irvine, Mrs. James S. Fitzhugh.
From R. T. W. Duke Camp, S. C. V.: Homer Richey, T.
E- Powers, R. T. W. Duke, Jr., Henry W. Battle, S. F. Haram,
Albert S. Boiling.
Subcommittees and Chairmen.
Finance Committee : T. E. Powers.
Invitation of Notables: C. B. Linney.
Headquarters Committee : S. S. Fife.
Transportation Committee : Oscar T. Allegree.
Committee on Luncheons: Mrs. Lawson M. Turner, Mrs.
Noble Sneed, Mrs. H. P. Porter.
Committee on Decorations: J. C. Quarles, Mrs. James E.
Irvine, Mrs. James S. Fitzhugh.
Grandstands, Chairs, Tables, etc. : W. Rice Barksdale.
Smokes, Drinks, Movie Tickets, etc. : M. V. Pence.
Committee on Housing and Assignments: J. Payne Carroll.
Reception at Trains: W. Eskridge Duke.
Reception Committee at Hotel Headquarters: Albert S.
Boiling.
Police and First Aid : John R, Morris.
General Program : Homer Richey.
Music Committee : W. W. Waddell.
Special Committee on Speaker for Unveiling: H. W. Battle.
Parade : C. B. Linney.
Reception : Mrs. Glassell Fitzhugh.
Grand Ball: Albert S. Boiling.
Trip to Monticello : Oscar T. Allegree.
Txfl
42617D
PREFACE
In four years two annual reunions of the Virginia Division
of the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans — the thirty-fourth
and the thirty-seventh — have been held in Charlottesville. The
thirty-fourth reunion was notable for many reasons, but es-
pecially for the unveiling of Keek's equestrian statue of Stone-
wall Jackson in Jackson Park, when the veil was withdrawn by
two grandchildren of General Jackson, Miss Anna Jackson
Preston of Charlotte, N. C, and Thomas J. Jackson Christian
of Utica, N. Y. The chief address was by Senator Patton
Harrison of Mississippi. In presenting the statue on behalf of
the giver, Mr. Paul Goodloe Mclntire, Dr. Edwin A. Alder-
man, president of the University of Virginia, said that in a
high spiritual sense the presentation was to the valiant souls
then living who fought beneath the Stars and Bars and in the
belief that the statue will stand forever a symbol of victorious
might in war, of single-heartedness in conduct, and an inspira-
tion to those "who love their country well but freedom more."
It is the gift, the speaker added, of a great home-loving, unsel-
fish citizen, bred of this air and born of this soil, who thus
seeks, through the majestic medium of art and beauty, to teach
to other ages how moving and eternal are the qualities of cour-
age and character, of action and principle, of loyalty and honor,
when embodied in one strong, appealing, fascinating person-
ality.
The second of these reunions was that held in May, 1924,
whose record the projectors of this volume seek to make per-
manent and available. Interesting from beginning to end, the
most important of the three days of the reunion was May 22,
the one on which occurred, with reverent observances, the un-
veiling of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
Some years ago Mr. Mclntire commissioned Henry W.
Shrady to create a great bronze monument to the leader of the
Confederate hosts. He had won a high place as a sculptor
even before he had produced the Grant Memorial at the na-
tional capitol. The memorial was to be ready for unveiling in
1 < >22, but the sculptor died in April of that year, having ac-
"2"' . '••" I-nWH, ■ young Italian artist who had stud ed
" 3 ''■'■ J. begun In the finished work General Lee is repre
, '' "" h ' 8 "»**<»* Traveler; horse and rider risint W
'" "< i haK feet from the top of the pedestal. K^I
me« stands ,„ hee Park, one entire city square, which M r
M.li. lire formed by uurchasino- a,„ „;,„ j no Mr -
ings that were on £ PUrCbaSmg the slte and "movmg the build-
benjnt' "ore tft " 3 H*** Wh ° Se contributions
lie is a nati^enf Pfi . « "^ ° f h '' S 0W " r0 ™" & *-»•
« Ms a nat.ve of Charlottesville, a son of George M Melnri™.
rth'trmvt ( M arkC l MClntire - ThCTe * - «
s,y oV^Sa,1n!XetTad W h^fi n r :t S ^ * "* ?*~
ness Afw „„l, r . - ' ex P e ™nce m busi-
ne 'game n eh? f ° rty / e " s » the h "^ I»riy of the busi-
rL V ?° a " d NeW Y ° rk ' °«asio„ally suspended
r P nd the S E t"Tr *" COnce ™ d ' by »l£™ *»£
P^a of art Jw ™ T thC " eed ° f recreati0 " «"«• *e ap-
%ZZ "' . gal,en f s and art en "oWed cities called him he re-
wavf Hi fi T t,Ve f dty t0 beaUtify and «"<** * in many
ways. H,s first pft to Charlottesville was a monument "„
bronze to commemorate the explorations of Lewis au^ark
to tT " ^^ ° f AIbemarle ' Wh0 ' commissioned by P S
den Jefferson, "earned the flag of the young republic to the
Sir- ~ d a " ""known empire Jthe „I s'
of Mmty SSe'Sr S,3ndS ^ MidWay ^ " "'""<
This was followed by a monument of kindred commemora-
te to a native of Albemarle County, George R„„ ., QaA
sometimes called "the Hannibal of the West" 'n '
Ch^V^ °r f St ° neWa " J^cks,,,, OvYr king Ue ParH
the a ki7 v Ubrary ' ° ne ° f the ™ st "eautifu st ctur J
Z*&2£Z£Z the peop,e of his m,iw ™-
^ift2^^'^ *-?.-*• ^ Entire
me Arts tor the fostering of arts, including
PREFACE 7
architecture and music, its School of Commerce, a wing of its
hospital, and its out-door amphitheatre with its great organ.
Mr. Mclntire is a devout doer. Following, where religion is
concerned, the ancient paths un jostled by historic doubt or re-
cent instances of wavering faith, he is a modern in the trans-
mutation of his faith into performance. He looks up the work-
ers in remote fields where schools and churches are few, and
supports schools and churches in the mountain coves of his na-
tive county and in barren places elsewhere. He visits them and
the leaders of the communities in which they are located, walk-
ing, like the mountaineers themselves, along many miles of ob-
scure roads and paths, insists that these leaders make occasional
contact with the outside world for their own growth and power
and for the good of those they lead and teach, often furnish-
ing the money for excursions to distant scenes.
J. S. P.
'RARY
Tl,J ERSITY
OF TEXAS
Bronze; Statue of T
Unvei a * r° MAS J- (ST0N1JWA u.) Jackson, by Keck
lnvehed at Charlottesviluc, October 19 1921
THE GRAND CAMP ASSEMBLES
The thirty-seventh reunion of the Virginian Division of the
Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans began in Charlottesville
at 10 o'clock on the morning of May 20, 1924. The Veterans
found the city ready for them, appropriately decorated, and
hundreds of hospitable homes open to them.
But in the eagerness to receive and honor them there was no
forgetfulness of other guests— the official ladies, the Sons of
Confederate Veterans, the cadets from the Virginia Military
Institute and others, military and civic.
There are good reasons for believing that the Grand Camps
had never before attracted to a reunion so many visitors as this
one. Many came convinced that at this assembly and in the
very near future they must see, if they see at all again, men
who followed Lee and Jackson and Stuart, the Ashbys and
other leaders who officered the greatest army the world has
known of civilians turned soldiers to defend what they held as
of greater worth than life. General W. B. Freeman estimates
that the total number of Confederate Veterans living in Vir-
ginia does not exceed three thousand five hundred. Not less
than five hundred of these mustered at Charlottesville.
All of the meetings of the Grand Camp of United Confed-
erate Veterans were held in the Jefferson Theater. The first
session began at 10 o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, May
20, with prayer by Dr. Vernon I' Anson, chaplain general of the
Virginia Division of the United Confederate Veterans, in the
absence of Chaplain Dr. James C. Reid, who was detained by
illness :
O Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, our Heavenly Father,
we thank thee for this day and for the occasion that called us
together. We have assembled, O Lord, for the annual reunion
of this Grand Camp and for the unveiling of the noble monu-
ment erected to the memory of thy Christian Servant, the great
Christian Soldier and a wonderful teacher of young men and
the great exemplar to the youth of the land, Robert Edward
10
37TH Annual Reunion
!,<•<•. Wr 1 1 Link Thee for the wonderful providence which gave
11 ■■ the noble life for an example of this great leader and teacher
"I men and we bless Thee for giving us that kind-hearted, gen-
erous man, Mr. Mcintire, who has given us this splendid eques-
trian statue lhat is to be unveiled and we pray thy blessing over
all the meetings held at this time by so many of thy aged serv-
ants whom thou hast spared to be here, and we also pray Our
Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy King-
dom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven, give us
this day, our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we for-
give our debtors and lead us not in temptation but deliver us
from evil for thine is the Kingdom, the Power and Glory
through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.
Grand Commander C. B. Linney, then delivered his annual
address.
The; Grand Commander:
Veterans, Daughters, Sons of the Confederacy, Ladies and
Gentlemen:
^ With inexpressible joy and pleasure, and the deepest emo-
tions of affection welling in our hearts, we welcome you to this
historic city, and to the hearts and homes of this appreciative
and waiting people. Time has not effaced any of the ineffable
delight which was ours two years ago, when we met to honor
the memory of the illustrious Jackson. And need I remind you
that Confederate reunions are no ordinary occasions, but when
associated with the princely gift of a splendid memorial to Lee,
which you are here to receive and unveil on the morrow, il dif
ferentiates itself from all olher reunions, becomes historic, and
will pass into history nol as the Charlottesville Reunion, but
the Lee-Mclntire Reunion, A. I)., 1924.
Standing here in this augusl presence and amid these inspir-
ing scenes and looking back through the long visla of (he years
to that splendid galaxy of heroes who have graced this trysting
place with so much honor and distinction, I declare unto you
that my very soul is filled with humility, as I assume the duties
and privileges of the Commander of the Grand Camp of Vir-
ginia. I therefore bespeak your kind indulgence and invoke
Txt)
37th Annual Reunion
11
your generous aid, that the exercises of this happy occasion, so
auspiciously inaugurated to-day, may be in keeping with the
traditions of a glorious past, and find its fruition and climax on
the morrow, when in the presence of assembled thousands we
gather to pay our tribute of admiration and affection for one
whose fame has encircled the globe, and whose pure and un-
sullied character stands out, pre-eminently, in all history, with-
out a peer.
My Comrades, God in his inscrutable providence has brought
us thus far on our earthly pilgrimage, and we have passed an-
other milestone in our history as a camp, replete with sacred
and precious memories, lasting as time and immutable as eter-
nity. And while these faltering steps, palsied hands and be-
clouded visions are irrevocable reminders that we are soon to
come to the parting of the ways, the crossing of the bar and
the rest in the shade of the trees, I thank God that we have
lost nothing of our love for the Cause by the lapse of time,
which has wisely served to intensify our devotion, and will
only reach its climax when we have ceased to live, and an-
swered the last roll-call. My Comrades, ours is a rich heritage,
oh, how rich! Let no man take your crown of rejoicing or sell
his birthright for a mess of pottage. And is it any wonder that
our distinguished Governor out of the fullness of his patriotic
soul, proclaimed to the people of Virginia that he had rather
be, as he is, the son of a Confederate soldier, than to be the
Governor of this old Commonwealth with all its honors and the
emoluments of State.
When the great apostle to the Gentiles was making his mas-
terly defense of the Gospel before the Roman centurion, his
citizenship was impugned, and the proud and haughty Roman,
in deep humility, had to confess that he purchased his freedom
at a great price. Imagine if you will the heart of the great com-
moner, swelling with conscious pride as he exclaimed, "but I
was free born." That's the priceless freedom.
Or follow the French soldier as he is arraigned for a great
crime. The court is convened, the jury impaneled, and the
vast gathered assembly intense with expectancy to hear the
trial. The judge with solemn and measured tones asks the
prisoner what is his defense. Raising his sleeveless arm to
i !
37th Annual, Reunion
heaven, he ex [alms, "Nothing, your Honor, nothing. I fought
With Napoleon ,, Waterloo." The crime is quickly expiated
■""I amidsl the shouts and huzzas of the populace he goes forth
' free man, That's patriotism in action.
But, my comrades, what are these marvelous experiences
compared with the glory, honor and immortality of the Con-
federate soldier? See him as he struggles up the bloody heights
Oi (.ettysburg, under the piercing and admiring eye of his great
Commander, as he seeks with super-human effort to reach the
goal and win the day. The decisive hour has conic, and the
fate of the Confederacy is hanging in the balance. Southern
valor is to be put to the test, and to assert its supremacy. The
battle is joined and with quick and measured step they advance
upon the foe. The long line of infantry is being decimated at
every step. Brigades are reduced to regiments, regiments to
companies, companies to squads, and the curtain is soon to fall
upon the unequal contest. But listen. It is the clarion call of
the Captain of the last remaining squad struggling to reach the
wall. With hat and sword extended above his head, and in the
midst of the din and turmoil of the battle his clarion voice is
ringing out, "Come on, men, come on. My God, would you
live forever?" And they expire in a perfect halo of glory.
Live, yes live, in the affection and admiration of their com-
rades. Live in the pride and adoration of the State that gave
them birth. Live to equip an Angelo with vision so sublime
that he may portray the heroes upon the canvas as fit bed-fel-
lows for princes, to hang in the world's great gallery oT death-
less souls. Live to furnish inspiration and heroic theme for
the orator, with words that burn, and thoughts thai glow, thai
may live forever. The battle is over. The stillness of death
reigns. My Comrades, is it too much to believe thai as (lie sil-
very shades and gentle zephyrs of the quiet evening hour gather
about the sacred and hallowed place, there were upturned faces,
wreathed with raptured vision, gazing into (be heavens to catch
the compassionate and redeeming smile of (be heavenly father,
and ministering angels hovering round to convoy their spirits
to the celestial shores?
^ When that princely giver and philanthropist, Paul G. Mcln-
tire. presented the city of Charlottesville and the University of
37th Annuai, Reunion
13
Virginia with those splendid equestrian statues of Jackson and
Lee, the product of the genius of America's foremost sculptors,
Shrady, Lentelli and Keck of New York, a committee of our
.most distinguished citizens were requested to write the inscrip-
tions. They met, deliberated and deliberated, and came to the
wise conclusion that the English language with all its variety,
expression, beauty and poetry, was incapable of adding any-
thing to the glory and immortality of the great soldiers, and to-
day, the enduring granite bears the immortal names of Thomas
Jonathan Jackson and Robert Kdward Lee.
Had I the tongue of Jew or Greek, and nobler speech than
angels use, or were the proud possessor of the eloquence of a
Demosthenese, I could never reach the pinnacle of fame their
own achievement hath wrought.
God forbid that I should ever be guilty of the sin of irrever-
ence, but, my Comrades, it seems to me that there is an im-
measurable depth of kinship between the Supreme Sacrifice
that purchased the redemption of the world from sin, and that
of a soul, created in the image of his Maker, endowed with
superhuman intelligence, penetration and marvelous solution of
the many intricacies of life and with Godlike power to suffer
and endure, who can lay down his life upon the altar of freedom
that he may emancipate his country from the thraldom of op-
pression, bring deliverance to the captive and set at liberty those
who are dearer to him than life itself.
But, my comrades, men like Pilate are ever asking what is
Truth, and the answer comes back with wondrous import.
Truth is the eternal principle of right, is Godlike, and will pre-
vail. The battlefield, often the inevitable arbiter of fate, may
decide the issue ; the camp fires may cease to burn ; the bivouac
become a deserted hamlet ; the dreary midnight march a thing
of the past; the bugle may sound the requiem of the last de-
fender of a lost cause; the affectionate grasp of the hand of a
Lee, given when silence is golden, and the parting word spoken
with emotions that fill the deepest recesses of the soul, be said;
but with spirits undaunted and desolation on every hand, the
men of the Gray passed down the road to their happy but im-
poverished homes, singing as they went, "Home, Sweet Home,"
426175
I!
37th Annual Ruunioi
;i1 " 1 ''"'i: 1 " ""' inspiring refrain, wafted
IlKV.T '
on every passing
"Ye Shall know the truth, and the truth shall
11 take you free."
But, my comrades, there is a more beautiful and inspiring
Picture. One that we delight to look upon with pride and in-
'■use devotion— the companion picture. When the last ration
had been issued to the army, there came that sublime impas-
sioned and never-to-be-forgotten midnight assault on the ene-
mies lines at Petersburg, and the rationless march to Appo-
mattox with the last act in the drama that was to close the
scene forever. All hope seemed to have been lost, and a' night
of gloom to settle down upon a defeated and cheerless people
when there was a rift in the cloud, and the shadows lifted and
the evening star as a light that shineth in a dark place ushered
m the day star of hope, like unto the Bethlehem star, tbat was
to point us into fresh, fields of endeavor, and to put a new son?
in our mouth. And there was born a new Confederacy, not of
he debris and ashes of the old, with its failures and misfor-
tunes, but of the sublime courage and devotion of the Godly
women of the South, whose inspiring sacrifices, heroic deeds
and moral courage exceeded that of the battlefield, and the de-
votion of the Spartan mother. And there was instilled into
the minds and hearts of their sons and daughters a sacred rev-
erence for the fathers of the Confederacy, and the imperish-
able principle, that a people could never pass from the earth
while honor and love of country remain. And there was the
institution of the beautiful and appropriate memorial days
commemorative of the gallant deeds of our dead but ever liv-
ing heroes. And in joyous springtime, dame nature brings the
tribute of her fragrant flowers to be laid on the altar of our
devotion, and God's acre, the bivouac of the dead, becomes
more saered than storied urn or consecrated dusl of kings
But remembering that all things Confederate have "their
truition and consummation in the celebration of the natal days
of our great chieftains tee and Jackson, Daughters, Sons and
Veterans assemble for the feast of reason and the flow of soul
37th Annual Reunion
15
when oratory, song and music unite in one grand hallelujah
of acclaim to the heroes of the Confederacy. Here the orator
finds his theme, his inspiration, the musician reaches hither to
untouched chords of sweetness, mingled with past and sacred
associations, and the veteran fulfillment of all things here be-
low in the exaltation and sympathy of the sons and daughters
of the South. Here is made to live again in the old songs that
inspired him for the heroic deeds of the yesterday, and as they
gather in memory around the camp fires to recount the expe-
riences of the battle and to drop a tear for the departed one,
they catch fresh, courage for the battle of the morrow and swear
eternal allegiance to the Cause, and undying devotion to the
memory of the one that is gone.
Would you know the secret of their valor and heroic deeds
born in the crucible of trial and defeat, look you to their sub-
sequent years of patriotism and love of a united country and
witness the same patriotism, exemplified in their sons of to-day,
which so richly endowed their progenitors of a heroic past.
And as we look into the fair faces of the Daughters and Sons
of the Confederacy and witness their intense enthusiasm, zeal
and devotion for the Cause, we catch a new vision of the fu-
ture, and see the day rapidly approaching when these stately
monuments, mausoleums and battle abbys erected to our great
leaders will not stand alone, but there will be cherished, sacred
and hallowed memories of the principles and virtues for which
their fathers fought and died that will live and abide when
bronze and marble shall have crumbled into dust. And what
shall I say of the righteousness of the Cause for which they
sacrificed all, counting not their own lives dear unto themselves,
that they might win imperishable fame? Let the victor an-
swer union, policy, expedience. We answer, justification un-
der the constitution is our defense. There we leave the Cause
with the unbiased historian who will, in time, accord us due
mead of praise and an honorable verdict.
And now, my comrades, what more beautiful thought or in-
spiring message can I leave with you than Tennyson's immor-
tal lines :
37th Annual Reunion
"Crossing the Bar"
Stinsel and evening star,
\'«l one clear call for 'me;
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When. I put out to sea.
But such a tide as moving seems asleep
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home. P
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark: '
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark.
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
ine flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.
general McKim Evans, Colonel O. B Morran nf p- i, .
and Colonel Edgar Warneld, of AkxLdria ^ ' Chm ° nd '
Di^L iTT V SSi ° n ° f *? AmUal »"** of ^ Virginia
^vision, U. C. V. convened at 2:30, Major General W R
Freeman pres.ding. He de,ivered his annual addrest « f £
My Comrades, Ladies mid Gentlemen:
mL VT bewilderin g '° en^ into ,the festivities and the
fellowsh.p of a reunion like this. Across the chasm of e p ast
we shake hands with those who escaped the throes of wa and
m memory we commune with those who gave their hves' for
Z"^l CaUSe ' But thm is sti » in o«r »£ ^
m IS t P u\ ^ W " h a firm tread - foll °™? the im
of Zl e a ' ready aSCem ' eCl the eTCr,aSti "g h eigh*
37th Annual Reunion
17
It gives me joy to see so many survivors, vigorous and hale,
ready to winter the storms and waiting joyously for the twi-
light and the shadows.
But I shall not detain you but for a few moments to put be-
fore you some information which I consider of the most vital
importance. As is known to most of you, the American
Legion is now preparing and will soon publish a school his-
tory for use in the schools of our entire country. I need not
speak here of the need of a (rue history of our people of the
southland. You know what we have had, and how long we
have combatted the errors put before our children in the form
of history. '
The publishing committee of this new history applied to
General Haldeman to read the proof and see to it that it should
be fair to our people, lie in turn asked me to do this work. I
did not feel that I could assume such a responsibility without
the help of a trained historian. Together we went over the en-
tire manuscript, (about ISO galleys), and I am delighted to say
that the history is absolutely fair, tracing as it does the entire
history of our country from its discovery, through the colonial
days, the foundation of our government, the stormy days of
the forties and fifties, in dealing with the slavery question and
the abolition thereof, the secession of the states, the war, and
the dark reconstruction days following the war.
In all of this, we find nothing whatever that is objectionable.
This finding is to be finally presented to our United Confeder-
ate Veterans Association for approval.
Following General Freeman, the Hon. Don P. Halsey, of
Lynchburg, addressed the convention on behalf of the Sons of
Confederate Veterans.
Mr. Halsey:
Sir Commander, Veterans and Sons of Veterans and Daughters
of the Confederacy, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Greetings of love, honor, devotion and veneration to you,
gray-haired soldiers of the Old South, remaining survivors of
the glorious warriors who carried the starlit banners of the
Confederacy from victory unto victory and from defeat unto
IX
37th Annual Reunion
,I '" |V 1 "" L M&y your sojourn in this beloved and beautiful
n >' ,1 "".>: von unceasing joy as you mingle with your comrades
■"«' recall the memory of those golden days of your youth
When you lived in the romance of chivalry of war and of dan-
■"''''• ''' old Lynchburg, whose battle-scarred veterans were
vnur companions in so many of your heroic exploits, I brim*
you greetings and good wishes for health, happiness and pros-
perity for many years to come. If any reporter present should
care o mention what I have to say, I hope he will get that word
battle-scarred" correctly, and not write it down as it was once
done concerning a gallant veteran. The reporter made it "bat-
tle-scared, and when the old fellow came around next day to
whip the editor, he was assured that it would be corrected
But the imp of the perverse got among the types again, and
the next issue had it "bottle-scarred." Yes, from old Lynch-
burg, a battle-ground and a memory-haunted shrine of the Con-
federacy, I bring you affectionate and heart-felt salutations
and assure you that your place in her heart is eternal, that she
sti loves to hear the old voice of honor calling to duty, and
will cherish your deeds forever.
In the fateful days of that great conflict which divided our
beloved country in twain and bathed its soil in the blood of
thousands of the best and brighest of its sons, the troops of
btonewall Jackson, on one of those quick marches through the
Valley of Virginia, were one day passing a farmhouse, when a
young soldier was seen to step from the ranks and linger a
moment beside a rural burying-ground. Twice before, during
the campaign, he had done this, and this kind-hearted com-
mander inquired of him to know who was laid to rest there
under the shade of the trees." With trembling lips and fal-
tering tongue the young soldier replied: "Near the beginning
of the war my brother was killed (there were only two of us)
and father and mother and I had barely enough money to o- et
his body home from the field. Wc buried him here, and Gen-
eral, I have this to ask from you: Every time that we pass by,
1 want to be allowed to halt a moment and give him a tear It
is all I can do for him now." And so, out of a similar feeling
we sometimes think that this is all that we can do for our Con-
federate dead-to call a halt once in awhile upon the busy
37th Annual Reunion
!<J
march of life to drop a tear of tender love and sacred memory
upon their graves, and lay upon them the garlands of affection-
ate remembrance. But there is more than this that we can do.
Beautiful, indeed, is the custom of Memorial Day, when we
consider it a hallowed privilege to bedeck their graves with
flowers, and "oft in Springtime, when the roses bloom," will
we scatter love's sweet incense o'er the spot where "after life's
fitful fever they sleep well." But there is a higher duty yet
than this that we owe them. To our hands is committed the
sacred trust of defending against those who would misrepre-
sent and defame them, the sacred memories of those valiant
and heroic men, and of the righteous cause for which they
fought. The soldiers of the South have too long been placed
at a disadvantage in the way the history of their great struggle
has been written, and we owe it to them and to ourselves to
see to it that their deeds shall be truthfully perpetuated in our
traditions and our history, for — I say it boldly— in the history
of no people, ancient or modern, can be found a nobler record
of manliness, of self-denying endurance, of desperate, fault-
less valor and brilliant daring, and of heroic fortitude in the
hour when "death whirled in his dance on the bloody ground"
than is found in the story of you, venerable fathers, and of
your comrades who sleep beneath the azure arch of Heaven's
lofty dome in this land where "the battle's red blast has flashed
to the future the fame of the past," and which was the birth-
place and burial-ground of "the storm-cradled nation that fell."
The men who fought for the Confederacy not only believed,
but knew their cause was just, and they, therefore, gave to it
the best years of their manhood, "the faith of their souls and
the blood of their bodies," and when at last its sun had set at
Appomattox, in a mist of blood and tears, they who were left
behind "wrapped its memory in their loyal hearts, and death
will find it there." By the help of the Lord God of truth and
justice, we will be faithful to this trust. We will perpetuate
the story of those, who, by heroic sacrifice and valor, such as
the world had never seen before, struggled to maintain the em-
pire of principle in the earth, and who, with honor stainless
and consciences inviolate, laid down their lives in the fulfill-
ment of their task, nor shall their glory be forgotten while the
20
37TB Annual Reunion
stars keep their everlasting watch above their hallowed dust or
;„' ' "** " «*> of splendor on the eternaTnil s We
" «-«t mamtain, whatever partisan historians may say, Zat
' »•«• ■■ n,ost sacred devotion to principle, and the ngr.es
'' "' '"' e P^"ot,sm, that caused the men of the Soufh to
St^- f ° Ur tag ^ " ^- y -«ood«l fields
and that we of the succeeding generations have as just a ri K h
to feel pr,de m the record made by our fathers who fought be
neath the wavmg folds of the Stars and Bars as havf those
Stri" t I ( ° Ught 11 T thC M *« ° f ** "a- and
Stripes, the flag we all now love to call "Old Glory "
for I hold that true patriotism and unswerving loyalty to
devotodT "f "^ C ° nSiStent Wi,h ^W Terence and
devoted love for the cause of the Confederacy I am one of
the generate born after the war, but the son^f a man whose
woul/lt 7" *V * "" 3 S0Wier ° £ the Sou? -d
piled no L^T ^ heritEge " f ° r a " the « old a " d silver
h raMrv of I ET7 ^ ** ^ PTOUdeSt Crest » «*
Zlfus kmghth00d > nor for *e grandest crown that ever
sparkled on a monarch's brow." And speaking for the men
and women whose fathers followed Lee and Jackson, I unhT
tatmgly assert that, while we have no bitterness in our heats
towards those who followed Grant and Sherman, while to the
natron that survived the conflict we render loyalty and partiotic
sun looks dl ™T- g ° mS a " d rePUWiCS UP ° n « hich the
"New South™/" l\\Z Ca V hT ° ash the heavens; whik ° f *e
New South of wh,ch Grady spoke, with its glory of achieve-
ment and promise of splendor we are proud and confident yt
at the same time, we have no sympathy with any "New South-
that disparages the old; we are proud of the land of our birth
and the memories that surround her name, and we feel that the
young men or young women who do not feel proud that their
fathers fought beneath the starry flag of the Confederacy a
flag, which, thank God, dishonor never touched, are false to
them nat.ve land-aye, false to the very stars that shin bov
her, and false to the God beyond them! We have nothing to
be ashamed of, and nothing to apologize for, and the brave and
generous of the North will not yield us respect, but X
37th Annual Reunion
21
contempt, if we assume any other attitude. Away, then, with
any false notion of a "New South," ashamed of its past and
denying its heroes! If the South is ever to take the full and
equal part in the restored Union to which it is by right entitled
it is not upon any maudlin "New South," but upon the broad
and solid foundations of the Old South that we are to build—
the Old South with its old courage, its old courtesy, its old rev-
erence for women, its old fortitude in trial, its old spirit of
pride in its history, its old devotion to principle and its old tra-
ditions of truth and honor and loyalty and right! If there ever
was a time when the South needed to prove its loyalty to our
reunited country, that time is long since past. The silver
tongues of Grady and Gordon and Daniel and many others
long ago proclaimed that loyalty, and in two great wars the
sons of the South have sealed it with their blood. When in
1898 the despotic flag of Spain was swept forever from the
western world, the first blood shed in that behalf was that of
Worth Bagley, of North Carolina. And when, in the greatest
of all wars, our country became the deciding factor in the vic-
tory for the right, it was the boys from the Blue Ridge Moun-
tains of Virginia and the lowlands of Louisiana, as well as the
boys from the Green Mountains of Vermont, the plains of In-
diana and the golden shores of California, who gave up their
lives upon the altar of liberty, and added to the glorious names
of Trenton, Saratoga and Yorktown, of Manassas, Chancel-
lorsville, Gettysburg, and Appomattox, the gold-starred and
immortal names of Chateau-Thierry and the Forest of Ar-
gonne.
As a citizen, then, of a truly reunited country, I salute you
well-beloved soldiers, not as heroes of a "lost cause," but as
the surviving remnant of that immortal host who wrote the
name of Confederate soldier in letters of flame across the skies
whose deeds shine more resplendent as the years roll on and
whose glory it is to have stood firm in the face of overwhelm-
ing odds for those eternal principles of right upon which our
government was founded, and upon which it must forever
stand. For already the voice of history speaks your vindica-
tion, and the statesmen, jurists and political philosophers of ev-
22
37TH Annual Reunion
rlv '■"" l fCCOgnize that in that righteous conception of State
sovereignty combined in a Union with expressly granted pow-
ers lm which you fought— a Union of States "as distinct as
the billows, yet one as the sea"— is held the hope, not only of
America, but of the world, not only of one nation, but of hu-
u unity.
There was no evening session of the Confederate Veterans.
The evening was devoted to the formal welcome to official la-
dies. That part of the reunion program was assigned to the
Sons of Confederate Veterans.
II
SONS OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS
The first meeting of the twenty-ninth reunion of the Vir-
ginia Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, was held in the
Masonic Temple at 10 o'clock on the morning of Tuesday,
May 20, with Commander Lee O. Miller in the chair.
A second meeting was held in the afternoon to receive re-
ports of the Division Commander and Division Adjutant, Staff
Officers and committees.
At 8 o'clock, in the Jefferson Theatre, occurred the formal
welcome and presentation of official ladies. Albert S. Boiling
Commander of R. T. W. Duke Camp, Sons of Confederate
Veterans, introduced the State Commander, who upon assum-
ing the chair delivered the following address:
Comrade Commander, His Excellency, the Governor of Vir-
ginia, Daughters of the Confederacy and Comrades:
Just a few years ago we were invited to the city of Char-
lottesville to pay a tribute of love and to honor one whose name
has pointed the way to every son of the South. We unveiled
the statue of General "Stonewall" Jackson. Today we are
gathered in this same city to pay again a tribute of love, and to
honor one whose name and life is a beacon ray to the men of
the world, to guide them to the highest things in life. We will
on the morrow unveil a statue of Robert- Edward Lee. The
life of Lee is studied by soldiers to learn a lesson in strategy,
37th Annual Reunion
23
by historians to teach the world the effect of his life in the
making of a nation, but as I turn the pages of the life of Lee
I love to study the nobility of his character, his faith in God
and his love for humanity. I cannot understand the details of
his military plans; I know in a small way the effect of his life
in the American Nation, but when I read of the gentleness of
his nature, his faith in his fellow-man, I can understand why a
young man can well follow the teaching of his life.
On behalf of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, of which
organization I have the honor of being the Commander, I wish
to express appreciation of the welcome you have given us, and
I know that the hospitality shown us is exemplary of your love
to the cause which is represented by the white haired men in
this assemblage tonight. Followers of Lee and Jackson, I
greet you on behalf of the Sons. I believe that I can safely say
that our hearts are filled with something of the same spirit
which animated you more than sixty years ago, that our love
for the cause for which you gave your all is just as warm as
the love of the youth of 1861. You have done your part by
your country; you have lived your noble life and now it is our
duty to keep alive, not the prejudice of a wronged people, not
the battle you waged, but the ideals which you held to be sa-
cred, the memory of your deeds and the heroism which so en-
riched your country. Let me take you back over the years to
about 1860. We see a comfortable home in the hills of Vir-
ginia; after the work of the day, the family gathered about the
fireside planning the future of the boy of the home, all the as-
piration and desire of the father in the future of the son. Hear
the sound of the trumpet calling to the colors of Virginia that
boy in whom you placed hopes. See him march to battle.
Could I tell you of the next four years of suffering, hardships
and danger in that boy's life, the countless sleepless nights, the
numberless days of constant marching, the fires of hell through
which he passed, but this I cannot do. I know that one day he
comes home; no it is not home for the enemies of civilization
passed that way and in their wake left a trail of charred and
ruined houses, farms and people. But the spirit that drove you
into battle was with you still, the desire to gather together the
24
37th Annual Reunion
remnanl and build a nation inspired you, and today on the sun-
sel aide Oi life you behold a land of love and peace. This is a
dehl we of the Sons owe to you, and this debt shall be paid by
our constancy to the ideals for which you fought. After the
war as you sat in that which was once your home I wonder if
ypu (bought that your fight was vain, that your cause was un-
just, that the principles for which you fought were wrong?
Now, after fifty years, you behold the president of this coun-
try, another Virginian, sounding the call "to arms" both South
and North to defend the same principles for which you made
your sacrifice.
The work of the Sons is bearing fruit. Our labors are not
in vain. We are carrying onward those same ideals, but the
success we have attained is largely due to the fair daughters of
the South. At every turn in the road, at every difficult task we
lay our hands to, we find these staunch supporters of the South,
willing and eager to assist. I believe I am justified in saying
that without the assistance of the women little could we accom-
plish. In establishing new Camps in the Division they have as-
sisted materially and the large increase in the last two years is
the result of the co-operation of the Daughters.
At the Monroe celebration, last winter, in the city of Rich-
mond the stalwart leader of' democracy, William Jennings Bry-
an, after a visit to the monuments in the city, said that this
state was truly a state of monuments. In the western states
that great stretch of country in which many southerners after
the war made their home, had very few reasons to erect monu-
ments, but the State of Virginia so rich in history, the state
that has produced so many great men and bore such an impor-
tant part in making our nation, is so fortunate in having the
reason for monuments. The city of Baltimore is often referred
to as the Monumental City, surely if there is a Monumental
State Virginia is that state. We delight in the monuments of
our leaders, we are making the memories of the people of our
state as lasting as bronze and granite, but these tributes are
lasting only as long as the elements will permit, but we of the
South, in our hearts have the love of the heroes of the Confed-
eracy. That is a monument that will last as long as there are
women in our South.
37th Annual Reunion
25
Some time ago I was present at a meeting which was being
addressed by a very prominent gentleman from Massachusetts.
He was loud in his praise of Virginia and things Virginian.
He paid glowing tribute to the progress our state is making, of
the traditons with which we were enriched. He said, however,
Massachusetts had many things in common with Virginia, both
in history and in progress, that Virginia had her Jamestown
and Massachusetts her Plymouth Rock; Virginia had her York-
town and Massachusetts had her Bunker Hill; Virginia had
her Robert E. Lee— the gentleman paused as if unable to find
a parallel. He could not match the name of Robert E. Lee, and
friends, not Massachusetts or any other state, not this nation
or any other nation in this world has yet been able to match the
name of Robert E. Lee. Virginia did not stop there in giving
the world unmatchable men. When the crisis came in human-
ity's struggle for freedom, we did not turn to the North nor to
the West, we of Virginia did not seek beyond the borders of
our fair state for one in whom we must look for guidance, for
there was one Virginian in the Capitol at Washington, one who
later died as the result of battle wound, one who was as surely
a martyr as was the unknown soldier at Arlington. And if
this government of ours exists for a thousand years, yes, if the
world sustains the shocks of battle in years to come, no state,
government or nation can ever match the name of the Vir-
ginian, Woodrow Wilson.
Commander Miller then presented Councilman John R.
Morris, who welcomed the city's guests on behalf of Mayor
Joachim :
Mr. Commander, Confederate Veterans, Official Ladies, Daugh-
ters of the Confederacy, Sons of Confederate Veterans,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
As a representative of the City Government, it is my great
privilege to welcome you to-night.
Confederate veterans, we welcome you for the sake of the
great cause you represent, and for the sake of those great lead-
ers whom you followed through four years of hardship and
privation greater than which no body of men in the history of
.'<,
37th Annual Reunjoi
""■ «fW went through. We love and honor you for the noble
£■£ >- ^ve set by your unselfish devotL to/a^^-
*M For, that great cause which you believed to be right and
In this period of world unrest, when our generation is con-
fro ted b y Iex questiong on eyery we are .on
by the example you set for us, when at the close of the civil
war y OU t00k the threads of Hfe under ^
inlT^nM W1 ^ ViSi ° n ' r^ ^ det ~- stared
of ours until Ti T S "I t0 deVd0P tWs «** Southland
voti and 5 2t Stands f ° rth aS a nobIe mon ^nt to
you and your comrades. Realizing what you have done, we of
the younger generation should face with undaunted spirit the
problems that confront us and with clear insight, calm judg!
ment and undaunted spirit grapple with and successfully solve
them. We pledge ourselves to hand down from generation to
generation ^a true record of your great achievements and ev £
to keep them fresh m the hearts and minds of our children
and our children's children until time is no more
Daughters of the Confederacy, we welcome you, worthy suc-
cessors of noble mothers. We admire, honor and love you for
your unselfish work in caring for and sustaining these veterans
m then- declining years, and for preserving the records of their
unparalleled achievements. You have displayed at all times the
same spint that prompted your ancestors to give their all to the
great cause of the Confederacy.
Official Ladies, we welcome you as a part of this sacred or-
ganization.
Sons of Confederate Veterans, we welcome you noble repre-
sentatives of hero fathers, knowing that the same courage and
devotion that prompted your ancestors to give their all for the
sacred cause will, whenever the occasion arises, cause you to
stand with unbroken front for whatever is right and just
At this twilight hour, the spirit of that great American citi-
zen, who did so much towards the establishing of this great na-
tion of ours, and whose resting place is on yon mountain top
hovers over us, and joins with us in giving you welcome. May
your stay be pleasant and may the memories of this reunion go
37th Annum, Reunion
27
with you through the coming years, and abide with you until
you are called to join your leaders and comrades on the other
shore.
In conclusion may T pause for a moment to pay tribute to
the man, who by his vision and generosity has given to this
community so many works of art, which will not only be a
source of great pleasure and benefit l<> the citizens of this com-
munity, but through the medium of the students of the Uni-
versity of Virginia, the benefit of these works of art will be
spread from coast to coast, and will draw attention of the whole
country to our beautiful city. Words cannot express the ap-
preciation this community feels to Mr. Paul Goodloe Mclntire
for his generosity in this and other lines. These monuments
will ever remain to remind us of the heroic deeds and great
service rendered our country by these sons of Virginia, in whose
memories they are erected.
As we gaze upon these bronze figures representing Lee, Jack-
son, Lewis and Clark and George Roger Clark, they bring to
our minds the words of the great American poet:
"Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of time.
Footprints that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing shall take heart again.
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate,
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait."
Governor Trinkle responded.
The Governor:
Responding to your gracious greetings of welcome it is with
mingled pleasure and pride that I address you. For again, as
of old, through the streets of this storied city are heard the
.\x
37th Annual Reunion
'"'""■' Btraina Oi Dixie, and again, as in the olden time in that
•"'-•-! I,„„ where we were dreaming, the Stars and Bars un-
1,111 their beauty to the breath of a Southern breeze
Uet "s make glad today in this, our reunion-a reunion of
traditions, a reunion of memories, a reunion of hearts The
world, we are told, has progressed since the days of I860- that
commerce, that industry, that life, are now conducted alon,
more progressive and gigantic lines. The peoples of the earth
rw US Lw rged fr ° m " COnflkt ° f the nations - But either
the World War, nor the world itself, has been able in its prog-
ress to produce a peer to that matchless chieftain, that peerless
Christian gentleman, that stainless leader of a stainless cause
— Kobert Edward Lee.
There are figures in history, my friends, which typify more
than an era; which are emblematic of the purity and of the
strength of a people. Such were those Pillars of Hercules of
the Confederate States— Jackson and Lee.
As I look upon your uniforms today the memory of my
father arises before me. For he, too, was a soldier of that
Government which arose in splendor, which was maintained in
honor, and which sank in glory. As I honor the memory of
•my father, so honor I those men who fought side by side with
my father And in this spirit of veneration, of honor and of
affection, I respond to your welcome today.
_ Soldiers of the South, now that the battle smoke of the six-
ties has passed from your vision, it may be that you can dis-
cern more clearly and gaze with calmer and more steadfast eyes
into the vista of a nearer future. It has now been more than
fafty years since the war drums ceased their throbbing and the
battle flags were furled. Passion and prejudice and sectional
pride are not now what they were at the close of the four years
of the mighty conflict. And yet today, out of the far silence of
the sky, I seemed to hear the thin, clear call of a trumpet
Jackson must be on guard over the battlements of eternity and
his bugler sends a greeting to the men still left behind.
Virginia joins in that greeting to the soldiers of the Southern
States. She feels that in your presence she is honored. She
knows that in your company she is happy. As you helped to
37th Annual Reunion
29
guard her in the days of her peril, even to the sacrifice of your
blood, so she delights to lavish upon you an undying affection,
which is sprung from obligation and respect. The uniform
which you wear is the livery of honor, the cause which you
served is a passport to glory, each of your wounds is a badge
of courage, the records of your service is a title, to immortal-
ity.
There are no soldiers, in the estimation of Virginia, like the
gray-clad hosts which fought side by side with our fathers.
Down the long line of years we still hear the roll of their ket-
tle drums, the sound of their marching, the songs of their
bivouac. The strains of Dixie, which so gladden our hearts
today, still fashion the music of our dreams. And often in
dreams again we see the long line of Confederate battle press-
ing forward.
Inveterate in virtue, with that chastity of honor which felt a
stain like a wound, the leaders of the "Lost Cause" still pass
before our mental vision, directing the movements of their men.
The campaigns of the Valley, the fighting at Malvern Hill and
Cold Harbor, the battles of Spotsylvania Court House, Chan-
cellorsville, Fredericksburg and Manassas, still represent to the
heart and to the pride of Virginia that glory that was Jackson
and that grandeur that was Lee.
Out of those days of imperishable splendor you, my friends,
are bequeathed by time as the last living memorials. To be
numbered among the veterans of the armies of the Confeder-
acy is, in itself, to be named a hero. It is a glorious inheritance
to hand down to your children, it is a deathless legacy to pass
on to posterity. To such of us here today as enjoy the privi-
lege of your presence the memory will remain as something
sacred through life.
Soldiers of the South, I respond to your welcome, in the
name and with the love of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Greetings from the Grand Camp Confederate Veterans was
offered by the Hon. Carter R. Bishop of Petersburg.
Mr. Bishop:
Mr. Chairman, Your Excellency, and the allied and beauti-
fied Powers here assembled, whose inspiration is that Cause
30
37th Annual Reunion
w,l "' h was > ;|II(I « and always will be strong with the strength
of Righl and Immortal with the immortality of Truth.
The Chief Executive of this Commonwealth has just pro-
claimed condign punishment to any speaker wasting more than
ten minutes of this glorious occasion; and you know Virginians
are very zealous in regard to observing and enforcing laws-
pardon me— I mean home-made laws. So I shall have to be
guided by his caution and abandon the beautiful two hours and
a half oration that I had prepared, and keep my eyes on the
clock so thoughtfully put up there by those in charge, which
like the railroad signal says "Main Line, Stop!" Though, with
all the modesty of a vestal virgin I might suggest that Henry
A. Wise of blessed memory, once spoke five days and about
two hours before he concluded, threw up both hands and ex-
claimed, "Great Heavens! How my ideas do crowd me!"
But it is military to be brief and soldierly to be emphatic. A
soldier can cover the whole situation with few words.
Do any of you recall the account of the Battle of the Crater
at Petersburg, given to the press by the Confederate War De-
partment? The battle was one of the most desperate of the
war and certainly one of the most unique encounters known to
history. A fort whose garrison had been destroyed by a sub-
teranean explosion was held by twenty-five thousand Federals
with forty thousand reserves at hand to be thrown in as soon
as the casualities made room for them on the field and was re-
taken by 3,000 Confederates, two-thirds of them assembled by
dividing a portion of the line miles away. Eight hundred of
Mahone's men charged and dislodged ten thousand, driving
them into the pit made by the explosion where those that sur-
vived were captured when Saunders made the last charge with
600 men, saving the city and the army of Northern Virginia.
I committed to memory the report sent by General Lee and
published by the Richmond Dispatch in its next issue. It was
in these words :
"The enemy sprang a mine under one of our salients this
morning. In the confusion incident to the explosion they cap-
tured a portion of our line from which they were subsequently
driven with loss." Two short sentences!
37th Annual Reunion
31
I imagine I can see Col. Walter Taylor eager to at least say
"very heavy loss" and hear Marse Bob saying "Omit adjectives,
Colonel Taylor."
Another evidence of military brevity, let me cite.
I hold in my hand a sheet of Confederate note paper, such as
you old fellows used sixty years ago when writing to the pretty
girls at home. At the top is written:
"This is to certify that I have known Private Nelson Baker
for several years and attended him for some time. He stam-
mers very badly and makes a poor soldier unfit I think for ac-
tive service.
John Herbert Claiborne, Surgeon.
Petersburg, Nov. 22, 1862."
Just below we read:
"Quartermasters Department
Petersburg, Virginia Nov. 24th 1862
Respectfully forwarded to General G. W. Smith, Richmond,
Virginia, with the request that Private Nelson Baker, Company
K, Seventh Virginia Cavalry be detailed to serve as teamster in
my department. Surgeon Claiborne states that he stutters very
badly and is unfit for active service. He will however serve as
a teamster.
E. B. Branch,
A. A. Quartermaster."
Now turn it over and read the endorsement:
"Hdqrs. Army N. V.
Fredericksburg, Dec. 1st 1862
Respectfully returned disapproved.
A soldier requires but few words in the discharge of his
duty.
R. E. Lee, General."
»
Can I cite higher or more explicit authority? Certainly not
to this court.
But even though I am allowed but a few minutes, I must
compliment you old soldiers on the reports sent in to Head-
32
37TH Annuai, Reunion
37th Annual Reunion
33
quarters, I know that the most irksome duty that camp offi-
cers have lo discharge is making out reports. And yet you
have done il with commendable promptness and care because
you arc Confederate Soldiers from whom sixty years could not
eradicate the conviction that nothing is as important as orders.
The inspiration of the Confederate Soldier was that orders
must be obeyed. When he had discharged this supreme duty,
he was content to leave the result to higher powers, knowing
men could do no more. The spirit embodied in some of these
reports is worthy of special mention. One dear old fellow after
answering the few questions on my form says:
"I am the only living member of this Camp. I fill all the
offices and am remitting dues for ten men."
I found myself smiling at his simple statement of absorbing
all the rank and dignity of the Staff and recalling one of Gil-
bert's "Bab Ballads" with which we amused ourselves and our
sweethearts fifty years ago. It recites that a young gentleman
—I think he must have been a reporter— sauntering on Rams-
gate Beach encountered a weather beaten old salt who was mut-
tering to himself:
"For I am the cook and the captain bold
And the mate of the 'Nancy' brig,
And the boatswain tight and the midship-mite
And the crew of the captain's gig."
Being a newspaper man, he sought an explanation of a state-
ment that seemed to him at least complex, saying:
"O, elderly man, it is little I know
Of the duties of man at sea;
But I'll eat my hand, if I understand
How it is that you can be
At once the cook and the captain bold
And the mate of the 'Nancy' brig,
And the boatswain tight and the midship-mite
And the crew of the captain's gig."
And the Ancient Mariner elucidated:
It seemed that the Brig "Nancy" had been cast away on a
barren island where they were compelled to subsist entirely on
themselves and as he was rescued as the sole survivor he rep-
resented in his own proper— or improper — person the whole
ship's company and so became
"At once the cook and the captain bold
And the mate of the 'Nancy' brig
And the boatswain tight and the midship-mite
And the crew of the captain's gig."
Having had my laugh, I sal pondering his artless statement
till the glorious spirit of it broke in upon me. It was worth a
hundred times the amount he remitted to enjoy the thrill that
his message gave me, I knew that he must have been the en-
sign of his regiment, lie remembered that the cautionary or-
der for a charge was "forward! Guide centre! Dress and
close in on the colours!"
I can see him now with the battle flag of the 6th, the 12th,
the 41st or some other Virginia regiment in the fire and
smoke of a crucial contest. The untarnished fame of the regi-
ment is in his keeping. Let others falter or fall his duty is to
hold aloft the colours and advance. And when there is no
"touch of elbows" on either side of him, he knows he is the
whole regiment. All its glory and honour is his and he will
maintain it. So he stands till relieved by orders or death!
What an example!
Don't talk to me about letting any camp disband while it has
two members ! A camp has no authority to disband and never
dies. When its last sentry has gone off post, his camp furls its
banner and takes its place in the eternal bivouac of the blessed
Parthenon of hallowed memories as an inspiration for coming
generations, to the end of time ; and who knows but that it may
have its share in the happiness of eternity?
And now in spite of the condign punishment — that is prom-
ised me for trespassing on your time, Mr. President, I must
refer to the message found in another one of the camp reports.
And by the way this reminds me that I have not paid tribute
to the assembled loveliness on this rostrum which by its daz-
zling suggestion of sweet-sixteen deludes us into thinking we
are just about eighteen. No, I have not attempted such a trib-
ute because I know I could not do justice to the subject. Still
34
.57th Annual Reunion
'" mv :,I "" M and confusion in confessing such inability I am
comforted with the conviction that nobody else could either.
Bui il a stranger were to step in that door to-night and ask
wl.ai these old gray soldiers fought for, every veteran would
rise in his place and point in eloquent silence to the beautiful
picture here presented; and the stranger would confess himself
sufficiently answered.
Some one of you old fellows after filling out his report felt
that he had not entirely unburdened his soul and so like Silas
Wegg he "dropped into poetry in a friendly way/' and quoting
his timely sentiment I give you this toast :
"Here's to the Daughters who have nobly done their duty,
May they live many years and still retain their beauty."
Major General W. B. Freeman of Richmond, Commander
of the Virginia Division, U. C. V., greeted the official ladies on
behalf of the Virginia Division of Confederate Veterans.
GenErae Freeman :
Mr. Chairman, My Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a cherished privilege and a pleasure that I bring to the
official ladies the greetings and good wishes of the United Con-
federate Veterans of Virginia.
True, this remnant of the men, your fathers, who stood on
the battle line in the great war between the states, is fast being
decimated by the casualties of unchangeable destiny. But there
is still a strong rearguard, keeping step, and closing up the
ranks as they follow the immortal column of those who have
ascended the everlasting heights beyond the skies.
The record these men have made in contending tor human
liberty, the right of self-determination, will live forever. The
judgment of all right thinking men approves of what they did,
and the sentiment is growing all the while and everywhere!
It will never die.
It is a cheering message that I bring you today, the message
that a history is now being prepared that will do justice to the
Confederate cause. The high principles for which it con-
tended, the splendid heroism on the field of battle, and the
37th Annual Reunion
35
knightly conduct of officers and men of the armies of the Con-
federacy is a heritage of which our beloved southland may
justly be proud. All over our united country, these things are
becoming better understood and more appreciated.
The American Legion is now engaged in preparing a school
history designed to take its place in all American schools. Very
naturally they want it reviewed and approved by the United
Confederate Veterans. The Committee asked our Commander-
in-Chief, General W. B. I [aldeman, to do this. He in turn, ap-
pointed your speaker to undertake the work. Naturally I did
not feel competent to assume such responsibility. I was, how-
ever, fortunate in finding a man to assist me who is a thorough
historian, and together we have carefully scrutinized every
word of the text. 1 am glad to say, that so far as we have
gone, the book is absolutely fair and just. It will be a great
day when this history supplants all of the objectionable and
sectional histories that the rising generation has had to endure.
To you, Sons, I would say as a final word, go on with your
great and good work. Multiply and strengthen your camps
throughout our beloved southland until the whole territory is
covered, and hold yourselves in readiness to inherit the charters
of the veteran camps so that you can carry on the good work
for all time.
Mrs. Charles H. H. Thomas of the University of Virginia
presented the greetings of the United Daughters of the Con-
federacy.
Mrs. Thomas:
Confederate Veterans, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I have the honor to be designated by the United Daughters
of the Confederacy to convey to you our warmest greetings
and welcome.
I esteem it a great privilege to have been present at the un-
veiling of the statue of General "Stonewall" Jackson last Oc-
tober; how much greater privilege is this opportunity to be in-
vited to pay tribute to that peerless leader, General Robert E.
Lee.
Charlottesville is proud to own such a work of art, and is
M>
37th Annual Reunion
tlu] y thankful to Mr. Raul G. Mclntire who has done so much
to enhance the beauty of our community.
I will not offer you the keys of the city, for you will find all
doors unlocked and open, and every citizen proud to offer you
a hearty welcome.
Mr. John Callan Brooks of Charlottesville greeted the official
ladies on behalf of the American Legion.
Mr. Brooks :
By command of the American Legion I extend warm-hearted
greetings to you, Mr. Commander, Official Ladies, Confederate
Veterans, and to you, Sons of Confederate Veterans. I am hon-
ored indeed by the privilege of standing in your presence and
bidding all of you welcome; and I dare believe our mood on
this occasion will permit me to say, with a special emphasis,
Welcome, Veterans of the Confederacy!
Confederate Veterans, half a century or more lies between
us,^ yet the principles for which you fought, the manner in
which you fought, and the knowledge of the dignity with which
you bore defeat remain to us, a priceless heritage. Your cause
was destined to defeat, yet you passed through the agony of
fulfillment with a courage which has never been surpassed.
Your ranks are growing thinner, and in obedience to the in-
exorable law of nature there can be but a few more years be-
fore the last survivor of the glorious armies of the Confeder-
acy will have passed over the river. We who follow you will
not, cannot, forget. We have so covenanted in our hearts. I
stand in your presence this evening with pride but also with
reverent sadness, for you represent to us who come after you
—to us who have felt the hot breath of war— the remnant of
a great race of Christian men who were not afraid to die for
the cause they and you never doubted was right, and who, un-
conquered by defeat, poverty and the pains of reconstruction,
builded anew homes for your children and your children's chil-
dren, and rehabilitated your country which reconstruction,
more than war, had impoverished. God knows you have not
lived in vain. The south as it is today is a memorial to your
fidelity and devotion. Monuments of stone that are beino-
37th Annual Reunion
37
raised to honor you will crumble with time but the spirit of the
Confederate soldier, indomitable in victory and defeat alike,
will never die.
Time is a great transmuting magician. It is transforming
bitterness and hatred into friendship and unity. This was ex-
emplified in the World War when in the armies that went
across the seas to save our civilization there was neither North
nor South — only the United States of America. This is as it
should be. According to St. John, "We have fellowship one
with another."
Let us for a moment glance backward through the years —
through the half century or more that lies between us. It was
the year 1861. Spring had come. A glowing sun had kissed
a dead earth and the fields and hills were alive with leaf and
flower. The call to arms came and you answered. Four years
passed away, four terribly tragic years, and at Appomattox the
Army of Northern Virginia, obedient to the command of its
leader, laid down its arms. It was Spring again and the same
old fields and hills were in bud and bloom, but oh! what a dif-
ference! Hope had fled from many breasts. Minds could not
grasp the full meaning of it all. There were mothers, like
"Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted
because they were not;" wives and sweethearts, "sighing for
the touch of vanished hands and the sound of voices that were
still;" the graves of friend and foe marked where the battle
had raged; the dread shadow of death was ever present; the
earth was marred by the ashes of your homes. That was war
as you knew it, a record of wastage, of bloodshed and of tears,
of glorious sacrifice, and, in the end, defeat with honor. And
it was in defeat that the South rose to heights of true great-
ness. A proud people had been crushed commercially and
overwhelmed physically by armies numerically superior, but
you with your glorious record of having fought as Christian
men fight accepted defeat as Christian men accept it. The
glory of that record, Confederate soldiers, neither time nor
man can remove or diminish. In truth, like a great soldier at
the dawn of the Christian era, you can say, "I have fought a
good fight, I have kept the faith." God has been with you.
May He be with you to the end!
38
37th Annual Reunion
The ;u Id rcss U> Confederate Veterans and Sons was then de-
livered hy VV. McDonald Lee, Commander-in-Chief of the Sons
«)t ( Jonfederate Veterans.
( low M an dicr Lee:
Grand Commander, Ladies, Veterans, Friends— all;
Not long since we assembled in this dear old town to regale
ourselves, and do homage at the unveiling of a heroic statue of
the "Right Arm" of the leader of the Confederate hosts. This
statue, and the one soon to be unshrouded, are from the munifi-
cent and great heart of your townsman, Paul Mclntire. His
generosity has added doubly to our several sojourns here. He is
known to be a lover of the South, her ideals, her valiant sons and
heroic women.
Perhaps no such assemblage has met in Charlottesville. If ex-
ceeded at any time in numbers (which I doubt), it was never ex-
celled in great impulses or the bonhomrne spirit.
Representing the Sons of the South, I feel the depth of honor
you confer upon me as your guest. While the minutes allotted
me shall not be poor in the need of praise for you dear ones wear-
ing the grey— your plaudits are ever sung in heart and voice by
those who know of your deeds of valor in war and your triumphs
over difficulties in the aftermath of so-called peace — I feel im-
pelled to bring a message to the younger generation who have re-
ceived a heritage from you, that, in the thoughtlessness of youth,
is too often passed over without impression. I am not unmindful
that in this great audience there are men and women striving in
peaceful mein to burnish up the laid-away sword of Lee, rusty
but humanly untarnished ; to keep the memories of your wonder-
ful achievements from falling into the discard, and, above all, to
see justice be done the South in the histories being formulated
for world perusal. As the Commander-in-Chief of you Sons of
the South, honored by you to the elevation that might worthily
be aspired to by any descendant of a Confederate Veteran, I feel
that I can speak freely to you of our accomplishments and our
failings. The latter are many, the former to he added to by
lessening these failings.
Some may think the Sons of Veterans and Daughters of the
Confederacy are organized for the purpose of keeping up strife
37th Annual Reunion
.><>
and feeling. It is not so. They do not desire to renew the im-
pulses that imbued men's souls when the cannon flashed and the
saber took its toll. No. Time assuages grief and animus, and
the day has gone when as a small boy we knew our erstwhile foe
as nothing but "Dam- Yankees." We do not today seek to blacken
the memory of those who were once (he foe of you men in grey.
No man can expect credil for his warfare, his intellect or manual
at arms, if he decry his opponent. Vanquishing or vanquished,
he must giv& due credit to his opponent, lest he fail in plaudit of
his own bravery and achievements, So, for that part of the North
who fought as they saw rij-hl ami a I I lie command of their Presi-
dent and their Governors, I have no criticism. I have criticism
as to the justice of their cause, because I believe them wrong to-
day, sixty years after I he war, and I knew that you fought for
what you knezv was right, I would not detract from the Northern
foe except that porlion of "Hessians," or "Huns," the hired
soldiers on the battlefield. When you went out to bury the enemy
dead, you perhaps turned over an alien, an adventurer that went
into the Army of the Union for gain, for a livelihood; and you
realized that ilia I man had stopped a bullet from your gun before
his bullet could hit (he chest of a cavalier of the South. I do
criticize a fratricidal warfare forced upon kith and kin where
hired mercenaries were used to overpower their brother's family.
And it is this criticism that I have carried to New York, San
Francisco and San Antonio.
Let the North have its just due, and they will get it ; give them
all that is coming to them, and they do get it. I would not detract
from their real history, but I do say that, when I see today films
being made up of a hundred years of American history, with
twelve professors to be the judges and one only of these a South-
ern man — pictures that include the War between the States that
will probably be flashed on canvas around the world, with pur-
ported instances where a handful of Federal soldiers put to rout
a hundred Southern Cavaliers (it would be nearer the truth to
reverse it) ; films that are going to depict your father and mine as
cowards, when we knew that it took two, or three, or four and
sometimes five Yankees to lick one Southerner — I say it behooves
us to be up and doing to see that history is writ aright. The Sons
started in the beginning of this program when they had as re-
10
37th Annum, Reunion
viewers twelve professors, all northern men. We have made a
li.i'.lii now for lliree years, costing money, time and speeches, and
have Bl Last gotten one censor of the twelve, Prof. Matthew Page
Andrews, of Baltimore, a fair man, and at one time Historian for
I lie Sons of Confederate Veterans. He alone is wrestling with
eleven Harvard and Yale and other men for the truth of American
history.
That is one piece of our work. The Daughters of the Con-
federacy are helping us in it, bless them! Without the women
we could do little. We have camps in California and Colorado.
We could hardly start them anywhere without the assistance of
the Daughters. In New York, where I spoke a few weeks ago
at the Astor, we have a rousing camp of several hundred Sons of
Confederate Veterans, and two chapters of Daughters, the mem-
bership amounting to thousands. We are going to start in
Boston. Two chapters of Daughters came to the Washington
meeting from Boston, and they promised they would go back and
organize there a camp of Sons. There are more than thirty-
three hundred sons of Confederate Veterans in Denver, Colorado.
Just think of that ! You wonder how these things can be, and
what is the explanation of so many descendants of Confederate
veterans throughout the North and West. Ah! when you, my
fathers, with Robert E. Lee, the immortal, laid down your arms at
Appomattox, and from there and other points came home with a
mule or a raw-boned horse, you trudged back to find the homestead
not nestling within well-kept bowers of roses and lilacs as you had
left it, but overgrown with honeysuckle and briars, the doors
■creaking on the hinges (if one was left). There was desolation
and waste. The younger of the men who came back, oftimes the
son with the father (both Confederate soldiers), would say to
themselves, "There is no living here for an extra mouth. I will
leave this distracted land ; I will go where I can make something
to send back to my dear old parents." Horace Greeley did not say
too early to the flower of our youth, the younger soldier unat-
tached, to start out West, or North. And some of you perhaps
may remember that there came back weekly or monthly stipends
that would support those old folks at home. Today in the North-
west it is estimated that among native-born Americans there is a
majority of Southerners and their descendants in every State as
37th Annum, Reunion
41
far as Washington or Oregon. That leven has levened the whole.
The spirit and blood of pure-born Americans has helped save us
from socialism, radicalism.
I put a catechism on one occasion to those Sons in Denver. It
was this : "What do you know about the settlement of your coun-
try ? Who came here first and established it ?" I give you my
word there was hardly one but had been led to believe that the
Pilgrim Fathers, driven from England and Holland and landing
on bleak Plymouth Rock, were the beginners of American civiliza-
tion. And why? Because their every history taught it. They were
Southern grandsons who had known no other history than that of
the North and West, issued by Northern publishers. They did
not know or think for a moment (because their history only alluded
to Jamestown perhaps in six-point type in a foot-note) that that
Virginia island was settled first, in 1607, thirteen years before the
men forced out of England into Holland had pushed off, striking
for nearabout the Jersey coast. Adverse winds drove them to the
now-enchanted shores of New England. These Western sons
were taught to believe the Pilgrims were the builders of the civili-
zation of this country, when the truth is that the cavaliers of
Europe, the real blood of England and France and Spain, settled
their own territory south of Mason and Dixon's Line, and did it
before the Pilgrim Fathers had even left Dutchland. Why, we
know now that the Dutch themselves had started a colony on Man-
hattan Island before the Pilgrims had set foot. Did you know
that these Pilgrims were carried in a Virginia ship and that their
charter called for a location in the "north-east part of the Colony
of Virginia?" But how many of our histories tell that little story?
The South is truly deficient in advertisement. Ah, that is the
trouble with us — the lack of written history. We would not dis-
count others, but others are not doing the South justice. Some
twenty years ago Judge Moffett, of Roanoke, and myself, work-
ing on the History Committee of the Sons of Veterans, found El-
son's history used in practically every school in Virginia. I can-
not tell you because of the ladies present what abominable stuff
was in that history, in such horrible terms that you would not wish
your twenty-year-old boy to read. We made a rumpus, and in
twelve months' time it was put out of Virginia's schools. We
then took it up with Gen. VanZandt, your old Commander-in-
42
37th Annual Reunion
n,irl OJ the Veterans, and with Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, of
the Sons' organization, and today I do not believe there is a single
copy of that history in a State of the South or the Southwest, nor
will there be soon a Northern-written history which is not approved
by the Veterans, Sons of Veterans and Daughters of the Con-
federacy.
Agents of publishers came down and said, "We will eliminate
those parts you folks object to." "All right; eliminate that and
give a correct history and we will not make further fight on it."
We found later that they were going to get out a "Southern Edi-
tion," eliminating the abjured stuff for use in the South only, con-
tinuing to furnish three-fourths of America— the East, the Middle
West and the Pacific Coast— with the original same abominable
stuff ; and are doing it today. We are not only continuing that
warfare in the South, excluding unfair histories, but are carrying
it into the North, into the West and even the East. We will not
fight for a biased history. God knows I have never seen a biased
history on the Southern side. Never yet, of all the histories I
have read in my work, have I seen one biased towards the South.
We do not so much blame Elson and commercially-minded people
like him in trying to sell their works. Nor do I blame the North-
ern people. I want you to take a lesson from them. It pays to
advertise. And they have advertised Plymouth Rock. They have
advertised Bunker Hill, which was not one-tenth the hardship, nor
as fruitful of results as what happened at Yorktown, or even the
little tilt by the women at Wilmington, N. C, who antedated the
Boston Tea-Party ; or many other events in our own Southland.
They have immortalized, yes capitalized, on their song and story,
because our friends up North know how to advertise. They
eulogize Paul Revere, and his job could have been done by a ten-
year-old Virginia boy. Jack Jouett, who saved the government of
Virginia, which at that time was the mainstay of the Revolution,
goes down unsung. He rode three times the distance of Paul
Revere, doing it on his own initiative, upon overhearing Tarleton's
troops gossip in the tavern while creeping towards Monticello, and
he saved the Governor, Thomas Jefferson, and the Legislature of
Virginia, an organization which was then more important than the
Continental Congress. Let them give Jack Jouett his rightful place
in history, and we will let Paul Revere ride on if he wants to, in
37th Annual Reunion
43
Northern verse. Let Jack Jouett's horse-ride receive the jnsl
honor of being the instrument that saved the American Revolution
at a critical time. Oh, I would not discount their Saratoga or
Bunker Hill. Yet they will talk in history and the movie about
Saratoga and their other victories, but what about the Cowpens,
where Gates' northern laurels turned to Southern willows? and
Yorktown, where our forefathers had to stem the tide and put on
the glorious finish for American freedom? These will hardly be
heard of. There will be Gettysburg, and Appomattox, and Sher-
man's cruel march; but Manassas and Wilderness and other
Southern feats will hardly be given passing notice.
I tell you, young men, if you do not belong to a Camp of Sons
of Confederate Veterans, if you deny it your influence and the pit-
tance of a dollar, or two dollars, a year — not as much as you would
roll up in cigarettes perhaps in a week — you are not only unmindful
of a heritage that is given you, which life nor death nor height nor
depth can ever take from you, but you are proving untrue to the
honor of the ancestor who gave you birth and bequeathed you such
a heritage. The Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Daughters
of the Confederacy, I repeat, are not keeping up strife, but they
are simply trying to see that justice be done in history and in the
movies which are going to be flashed around the world, a complete
history, as they call it, of a hundred years of America. And you
know the children of the millions will learn from these pictures,
as the boys of Denver learned from Northern histories that the
Pilgrims were the first settlers of America and that Gettysburg or
Chickamauga were the great battles of the War between the
States, or "War of Rebellion," as they style it ; and likely no Bull
Run or Wilderness will appear. You are derelict in duty if you
do not join a Camp and assist in the work. I go from Canada to
Mexico, when I can do the cause good, at my own expense. You
pay this little tribute here to the support of the general organiza-
tion, that it might get out literature, and, if necessary, hire some
speaker to go where we ourselves cannot go. We have a wonder-
ful campaign before us.
The Daughters of the Confederacy (again I say, God bless them)
are five hundred per cent ahead of us Sons. I am ashamed to tell
you so, but I want to shame it into you. They are organizing
chapters, they are helping our historians, they are organizing
II
37th Annual Reunion
Sons' camps and helping us in many ways. They are standing
Strongly behind these dear fathers of ours. Now, don't you feel
mean, you SOD of a veteran, or grandson or great-grandson, if you
have had opportunity to join a camp and haven't done it? I hope
and pray you will not be longer recreant. I can't say more for the
I )aughters of the Confederacy, they are so far ahead of us. Every
day I see greater inspiration in them than I do in the Sons, national
and State. They are leading us all. They are daughters and
grand-daughters of those mothers that lived in the days of the
Sixties. Madeline Bridges must have been thinking of the South-
ern matron when she wrote something like this :
"There are hearts that are strong, there are spirits brave,
There are souls that are pure and true —
Who give to the world the best they have ;
For the best comes back to you.
"For life is a mirror of king and slave ;
'Tis not what we are, but do.
So give to the world the best you have
And the best will come back to you."
For a few moments let me dwell on the devotion of your mothers.
Oh, you fathers, think of the days when you charged the can-
non's mouth ; you had a comrade by your side ; he nudged you or
you nudged him ; and, with the band and bugles behind, the thought
of danger had vanished from your breast, like with the six hundred
at Balaklava — which great piece of English heroism had been in-
spired but shortly before by Butler and his Palmetto Regiment on
the field of Cherubusco, in Mexico, where Southern arms carved
an empire from that heritage of the Montezumas. Yon will bear
me out, it was far easier for you to charge the ramparts with
comrade by your side, supporting and sustaining and cheering,
than it was for another — the wife, perhaps, or daughter, or sweet-
heart — that one who stayed at home and kept the embers burn-
ing. As she sat beside those embers, she knitted dexterously a
sock, perhaps, or a jacket, or mitten, which she might send to the
loved one at the front. When the courier would come (we had
no winged-messengers of the telephone then) riding down the
37th Annual Reunion
45
road, she would rush out and ask "How goes the battle? Is my
dear one still alive?" waiting with bated breath and hope. If
told that he still lives, "Bless God!" she reverently exclaims; and
then asks "How fares the battle? Is Stuart still riding? Is Stone-
wall Jackson still in the saddle ? Is Robert E. Lee still leading
our tattered hosts?" Her heart was attuned to that. When Jack-
son fell, or when Lee told his men he could not see them suffer
more and must through mercy give up, just think of the pangs to
the heart that was wailing, hoping for tidings of good; and then
came the reverse. For four long years your courage was great,
but not so great as that of the woman you had left behind, who
strained all her nerves and her heart and soul to help in your
fighting while tracing the destiny of the Stars and Bars. I speak
of your courage ; that is because it is your occasion now, but I
know you will not think of me as treasonable when I say the
braver of the two was the wife or daughter or sweetheart that
had been waiting by the fireside so long.
God bless the women of the South ! And, now, what was
their influence in the World War? When the nations of the old
world engaged in a death-grapple, and there appeared a line that
seemed not to be broken (the Hindenburg Line), America went
forth, the sons O'f the Grey, as well as of the Blue, and showed
them, like Alexander the Great — not dallying to untie — but how
to cut the Hindenburg Line; and Europe and the world was made
safe for democracy. They were scions of that blood which toiled
and hoped by the hearthside of the sixties. One thing more I
am going to add about woman's work. They are bringing to the
front one of the noblest of characters, unjustly maligned and al-
most forgotten. He was truly a martyred President. The U. D. C.
are immortalizing Jefferson Davis — not "Jeff" Davis, but "Jeffer-
son" Davis. We talk about martyred Presidents. Yes, there
was Lincoln, and I would not seek to break the spell of great-
ness. There was Garfield, and McKinley, who also fell by the
assassin's bullet. Yet I might add another martyr, Warren G.
Harding. Providence was kind in taking Abraham Lincoln at
the pinnacle of his glory. Had he lived out his term, he would
surely have fallen by the machinations of politicians. Already
had members of his cabinet set to work for his undoing. But
Providence was generous to him, and took him at the height of
•If)
37th Annual Reunion
fame, ;i sorrow felt even in the Confederate ranks. One can be
butchered in martyrdom with a great deal less pain and torment
than he can live as a martyr. There are many things worse than
death, and when I talk about martyred Presidents I want to say to
you had that lone man of Beauvior, Jefferson Davis been shot
down or stabbed by the enemy around Richmond his lot would
have been elysian to what the years that followed brought him.
Pronounced the greatest Secretary of War the nation ever had,
a statesman in his day with few equals canopied by the dome at
Washington, he became, as it were, a man without a country, and
lived the lingering years with the unjust finger of scorn pointed
at him. Truly Providence was less kind to him.
Recently another President died a veritable martyr. Had God
been as good to our Woodrow Wilson as He was to Abraham
Lincoln, he would have been the foremost man of the world.
Even had he died on his official trip to Europe the history of
every nation would have chanted him as the greatest world-liver.
But it was not to be his fate. He was to come back, and his rea-
son be partially impaired by the torment of political enemies —
one in particular, who, if there is a heaven and a hell, as I know
there are, will never see Abraham's bosom. That one is Henry
Cabot Lodge.
Then let us take courage, men and women of the younger
generation, and know no such word as "halt" in our battle for
justice, even as the boys overseas. Illustrative of their valor and
no thought of halting, I close with this little story, which I am
sorry to see is now being repeated on the vaudeville stage. It
was twenty years ago I heard it, while sitting in a hotel in Mem-
phis, where we had already held two Reunions. Shortly after
the War between the States there was a drummer, a Confederate
cavalryman once, who had been left at his hotel by the 'bus that
was going to the depot. Looking about, he saw only a ramshackly
spring-wagon, an old horse and a cotton-headed negro driver. In
desperation, he turned and said, "Can you get me to the depot in
time to catch the train?" "I dunno, boss; I'll try." So he threw
his grip into the old wagon, and stood up behind the driver, while
the latter was whipping his horse. The animal was hobbling like
this (indicating). Says the traveler, "Why don't you make him
go? I will never catch that train!" The reply was: "Boss, 'mem-
37th Annual Reunion
■1/
ber he was an 'ol war horse, he wuz." "War horse!" exclaimed
the ex-cavalryman. "Yes, sah ! he 'longed to Forrest's Cavalry."
"Forrest's Cavalry! Give me those reins." The drummer
snatched the reins, and shouted "Attention!" Up went the old
horse's head, his tail stuck in the air. "Charge !" roared the
drummer. Down the street that pack of bones went, lickety-
split, helter-skelter, bookety-boo, About the time he got to the
depot the drummer shouted "Hall !", and the old nag came back
on all fours. The drummer rolled out and started to give the
negro a dollar, but the answer came, "Boss, you don't owe me
nothing. You ketch your train; you dun l'arnt me something."
The old negro, it seems had another passenger on a hurried call
a few days later; so he screamed out in his piping voice "Atten-
tion!" The old horse pricked up his ears and tail. "Charge!"
and away he went lickety split, helter-skelter. When nearing the
destination of his passenger, the old negro began to scratch his
head. He was getting awfully worried. Finally he said, "Boss,
you better roll out o' here ; I dun forgot dat last word."
They, too, our sons across the seas, had forgotten such a word
as "halt."
I thank you, Grand Commander and audience. I appreciate
your listening to me.
Colonel John R. Saunders, Attorney-General of Virginia, in
a graceful address, presented the official ladies, and Dr. H. W.
Battle responded for them in a spirited speech.*
Ill
ROBERT E. LEE DAY
(Wednesday, May 21)
The morning of Unveiling Day was devoted to a visit to
Monticello by Veterans, Sons of Veterans, and Officials. At
one-thirty the various organizations took their places in the Pa-
rade which was to precede the unveiling in Lee Park. All
*The compiler regrets the omission of the text of these addresses. In
a letter to Colonel Linney, Colonel Saunders explained that he never
writes a speech. "I don't think I could give you half a dozen sentences
in the address which I made in Charlottesville. I certainly appreciate
the honor you confer in asking for a copy of this address." Dr. Battle
was equally unable to comply. He, too, spoke without notes.
•IS
37tii Annual Reunion
business was suspended, and everybody in the city and all the
guests there took part in one way or another in what many
regard as the greatest pageant that ever moved through the
Streets of Charlottesville. The line of march was from the
I diversity of Virginia, Eastward on Main Street to E. Fifth
Sheet, North along E. Fifth Street to Court Square, West
along Jefferson Street to E. Fourth Street, North along E.
Fourth Street to High Street, West along High Street to E.
Second Street, and thence South along East Second Street to
Lee Park.
The procession moved in two Divisions as follows :
First Division
Mounted Police
Chief Marshal, Colonel Thomas S. Keller
Aids: Major Thomas P. Peyton, Major Eugene Bradbury
Major John S. Graves, Captain Elmer Johnson, Captain
Joel M. Cochran
Virginia Military Institute Cadets
Preceded by their Band
Richmond Grays Battalion commanded by Major William W.
Poindexter, preceded by 116th Infantry Band, led by
J. B. Andrews, Staff Officer 183d Infantry Band
Richmond Howitzers
Visiting Military
Preceded by their Band
Company L, 116th Infantry, Staunton, commanded by Charles
P. Serrell
Company B, 116th Infantry, Lynchburg, commanded by T. K.
Menafee
American Legion and Spanish War Veterans
Escort to the Governor of Virginia
Richmond Light Infantry Blues, commanded by Major Mills
F. Neal
Preceded by John Marshall Pligh School Band
Governor E. Lee Trinkle and Staff
(In double column automobiles)
37th Annual Reunion
l<>
Invitation and Reception Committee, Speakers and Invited
Guests, President and Hoard of Visitors of the
University of Virginia
(In double column automobiles)
City Commissioners and Board of Supervisors of Albemarle
County
(In double column automobiles)
University Faculty, < Hlicers and Students
Preceded by their Band Colonel J. A. Cole, Commanding
SECOND Division
Major-General W. B, Freeman, Staff and Official Ladies
Preceded by Charlottesville Hand, (Official Band Virginia
I )i vision)
John Bowie Strange Camp, Grand Camp of Virginia,
Confederate Veterans and Official Ladies
Preceded by Stonewall Band
Albemarle Chaper, Daughters of the Confederacy and Visiting
Chapters
R. T. W. Duke Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans
and Official Ladies
Charlottesville and Albemarle High Schools
Civic Organizations in Uniform
Charlottesville Drum Corps
Fire Department
Monticello Guard and Boy Scouts Detailed as Military Police
Commanded by Captain E. V. Walker
I
50
37th Annual Reunion
37th Annual Reunion
51
The multitude assembled about the statue in Lee Park. Va-
rious organizations which had taken part in the parade were as-
signed to positions of honor near to the speaker's table. The
chair was assumed by Judge R. T. W. Duke, Jr., who said:
Daughters of the Confederacy, Members of the John Bowie
Strange Camp of Confederate Veterans, R. T. W. Duke
Camp Sons of Confederate Veterans, Ladies and Gentle-
men:
I am but a voice to have the pleasing task of calling you to
order and introducing those who are to take part in these exer-
cises. Charlottesville has already bidden you welcome and with
open hands and houses assured you of her joy at seeing you
here. The exercises of the occasion will be opened with prayer
by Rev. G. L. Petrie, D.D.,* Chaplain of the John Bowie
Strange Camp of Confederate Veterans.
Dr. Petrie:
O God, the great God, the Giver of great blessings, we ren-
der thanks to Thee for this supreme moment; for this day in
which it is a privilege to live; for this occasion of which it is
an honor to be a part; for these exercises which forever will
be a memory of delight.
Thou hast made our hearts glad in that by Thy kind provi-
dence we commemorate today one whom it was an honor to
know — a privilege to follow— a distinction to celebrate — a wel-
come opportunity to praise.
The erection, unveiling and dedication of this work of art
we account a signal, divine blessing to us.
We thank Thee for this distinguished gift so generously be-
stowed on us by Thy servant who is one of ourselves, whose
heart throbs with love to his own city, his own people, as also
to the Cause deeply cherished and munificently commemorated.
*Dr. Petrie was chaplain of the 22d Regiment of Alabama Volunteers
C. S. A. during the War.
We are conscious that this moment of our exalted privilege
is a moment on which a world's vision may well converge, and
a world's plaudits may well be bestowed.
We thank Thee for such a hero to whom to render this trib-
ute, such a donor to make glad our hearts by this gift, such an
artist who has wrought his artistic concept ion into stone and
bronze — such a beautiful ideal which shall endure in unfading
freshness and exquisite charm, when material things have
crumbled into dust and passed into forgetfulness.
Thou givest us today to emphasize a name that is without re-
proach, a record that is without a fault, a career that is with-
out a blot.
On the hero of our love and admiration Thou didst bestow
extraordinary gifts, seldom, if ever before, combined in one
person: a wealth of physical charm, personal power, intellec-
tual force, military genius, moral purity, religious faith, beauti-
ful life, calm repose and (lie majesty of self control.
Grand in the moments of success; grander in the trying
scenes of disaster. Great in victory; greater in defeat.
With a magnetic personality, the majesty of self command
secured without effort or intent, a supreme command of others.
Those years of struggle and sacrifice, through which Thou
didst lead us, and which seemed to us to be in vain, are now
seen by us to have been worth while, to produce, develop, re-
veal and perpetuate a life and character and memory of so
great a hero, and the lives and characters and memories of the
incomparable heroes who were intimately associated with him;
together constituting a group the equal to which the world's
annals do not record.
This day and these exercises to which Thou has brought us
create a classic in human life and in the history of human af-
fairs.
The grandeur and majesty of this work of art make it a suit-
able memorial, -because it is not only a tribute and a commem-
oration, but an emblem of him who in scenes of thrilling ex-
citement was of all the calmest, though every movement hung
upon his word. In the quiet of academic scenes the same calm
52
37th Annual Reunion
repOSfl imparted its power to impetuous youth. In the trying
I thick u f reconstruction of governmental rule and material
wealth 1 1 is attitude and restful pose swayed a people who loved
him and admired him and sought to imitate his illustrious ex-
ample.
We feel today, after all these years, the transcendent and
pervasive calm of his extraordinary character that rose above
and stood ever superior to every disturbing element.
Noting these splendid qualities, so conspicuous in the career
of our great hero, we recognize in them hints of their suprem-
acy alone in Thee. So they become to us an inspiration and an
upward call to reach out and up after the better and higher
things of life.
Enable us to emulate all the virtues of his life. Help us to
look through and beyond him to Thee who only art perfect,
and fashion our lives by the One Supreme Ideal.
Help us to pay our noblest tribute to the Unattained and Un-
attainable One from whom there will come to us forever an in-
spiration toward a loftier reach and a better life.
Let Thy benediction rest upon the veteran remnant of the
great army of the years long ago. Give the old soldiers strength
to complete life's long march, till the last lonely one has reached
the end, and the cause which once resounded through the world
becomes a memory and a tradition.
Bless the veterans of all our country's wars.
Bless the young people of today on whom soon the destinies
of this great Nation shall rest
May Thy choice blessings be upon the Daughters of the Con-
federacy, worthy followers of their heroic mothers, ever
thoughtful of the welfare and comfort of these old soldiers.
Bless this vast multitude of people.
Bless the speakers of this hour. Breathe on them Thy spirit.
Clothe their messages with power.
In the Name that is above every name, Amen.
The Chairman (Judge Duke) :
It is not only my privilege but my great pleasure to now pre-
sent to you the Rev. Henry W. Battle, D.D., the son of a dis-
37tii Annual Reunion
tinguished Confederate General who is himself alike distill
guished not only as a great minister but as a great public
speaker, and a most devoted son of Confederacy.
Dr. Battle:
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:
This is a great hour in the annals of Charlottesville and of
Virginia! This vast assembly is composed of elements that
would make any hour great. I bid you gaze on the scene thai
spreads out before my eye with swelling bosoms of joy and
pride — Confederate veterans, cherishing deathless devotion to a
cause as dear to them in old age as when in glorious youth they
trod, with the proud bearing of kings, battle fields consecrated
by matchless prowess to an immortality of fame; Sons and
Daughters of the Confederacy, their noblest heritage descent
from men who followed Lee and Jackson in the days that tried
men's souls; veterans of the world war — just the same on the
battle fields of l'Vance that their fathers and grandfathers were
at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg; children from the schools,
lifting their young voices in acclaim of those ideals of honor
and duty, which, as embodied in lives shaped in the school-
room to-day, will determine the destiny of this country, and, it
may be, the world; the honored presidents, faculties and stu-
dent-bodies of the state's two great universities; his Excellency
the Governor and his staff; the learned attorney-general, and
many others whose lustrous names shed honor on their states;
superbly uniformed and perfectly drilled military companies —
from the Capital City, from "The West Point of the South,"
from military institutes scarcely less famous, and representa
tives of the United States army; bands whose thrilling music
might have imparted an added rapture to Milton's warrior
angels; and this vast multitude, gathered from every section of
the dear old commonwealth — hearts tumultously beating in
sympathy with this occasion! — What does it all mean? — su-
premely, yonder draped statue, to be unveiled, in the presence
of this mighty concourse of men, women, and children, by a
lineal descendant of the incomparable man whose effigy it is.
They tell us that the pedestal is too small for the massive fig-
54
37th Annum, Reunion
11 n '- ' |,||;|1 'S as it should be— this planet as a pedestal would
be too small for Robert Edward Lee! Mounted on Traveller,
lx> goes I ravelling down the ages with the laurels of time and
eternity on his brow!
My fellow citizens, we are peculiarly fortunate in having
with us, on this inspiring occasion, one who will delineate the
matchless character of our hero, and interpret our sacred emo-
tions for us, as well as mortal can. Every drop of the red blood
that visits his heart and flows in his veins is Confederate blood
—Virginian, Scholar, Orator, Patriot, Christian Gentleman— I
have the happiness and the distinguished honor of presenting
him— Dr. M. Ashby Jones, of Atlanta, the orator of the day.
The Chairman :
It is my pleasing and honorable duty to introduce to you the
gentleman who is to make the address upon this occasion. He
is the son of one of the most ardent Confederates I have ever
known and who was one of the most beloved Chaplains in the
Confederate Army, Chaplain of Washington and Lee University
during the time whilst General Lee was President of that organi-
zation. He has followed in the footsteps of his illustrious sire-
not only in his devotion to the cause which ended before his
birth, but to the high calling in which his father served with such
conspicuous ability. I present to you the Rev. Dr. M. Ashby
Jones.
Dr. Jones:
Veterans of the Armies of the Southern Confederacy, comrades
of my father; Daughters of the Confederacy, high priestesses at
the altar of my mother's devotion, and Sons of Confederate
Veterans, you who cherish the same heritage of heroism which
is the priceless possession of my own heart, I greet you in three-
fold love, and congratulate you that you have been counted
worthy to become the sacred custodian of the immortal memory
of Robert Edward Lee. And I count myself happy, indeed, to
have a part in an occasion of such vital significance. I confess
that I crave the words which might fit the fineness of the feeling
which prompted this gift of Mr. Mclntire, and might mingle not
37th Annual Reunion
55
inharmoniously with the music of the memories which have been
stirred in our hearts today. Giving is, indeed, the finest of all the
arts. A gift reveals the temper of one's tastes, one's sense of
value, and, at the same time, it is a subtle expression of one's
estimate of those to whom he gives. A statue of Robert Edward
Lee is a revelation of the quality of the donor's own spirit, and a
delicate compliment to the people of this city, which shall always
be cherished. Robert Edward Lee is ours, yet in some true and
beautiful sense Mr, Mclntire lias given him to us again. Given
him to us again, because in this vivid and vital expression of the
genius of Lentelli Robert Edward Lee once again fronts the
souls of his people, and challenges them to a consciousness of
kinship to his own lofty spirit.
I shall not mar Ibis occasion with any self-conscious prattle of
my own insufficiency for (he task assigned me. I should but dis-
count the nobility of my theme, and your high sense of the fitness
of things did I even infer that your kind invitation carried any
such incongruous presumption. I take it that we have gathered
at the foot of this commanding effigy for mutual sympathy; that
in this atmosphere of reverence and love, and by the light of the
gathered glory of an ever increasing testimony, we may strive
once again lo read (he meaning of a great man. For we come not
to mourn over a memory, but to triumph in the incarnation of a
truth.
It has been nearly sixty years since the close of the Civil War.
The wounds of that fratricidal conflict have been healed. The
gulf which separated men is closed, and the passions and
prejudices which produced that fearful catastrophe have faded
away. Most of the great actors, who walked giantlike across the
stage of action, have passed out of the consciousness of our
national life. Faces and figures which, in the heated imagina-
tion of those days, loomed large with significance, in the sane and
sober thought of new generations and new issues, have shrunken
into normal proportions. But there is one figure silhouetted
against that background of flaming fierceness which grows larger
and more distinct as the fires of war subside. There is one voice
instinct with the tone of command, yet mixed with the melody of
love, which grows more audible as the cannons' roar subsides,
and is more potent in proclaiming the pathway of our national
56
37th Annual Reunion
life today than when it called men to storm batteries of death, or
to Stand firm against the inflowing tide of destruction. Robert
Edward Lee is greater in the thought of the world today than
when he was laid to rest beneath the academic shades of his be-
loved college in Lexington. Why is this true?
Each man's life is not only born out of his environment, but it
must find its expression in terms of the problems and enterprises
of his own day. Truths, sentiments, and ideals, may be univer-
sal in their appeal to the human heart and yet before they can
make this appeal they must become incarnated in some individual
life, and get themselves localized in some definite period of
human history. Not until a truth finds its Bethlehem can it be-
come a redeeming force in history.
So, if we would understand Robert Edward Lee, we must be-
gin with the fundamentally significant fact that he was a Vir-
ginian of the nineteenth century. That means that the sources
of his personality were deeply rooted in a social soil, pregnant
with the memories and traditions, the sentiments and convictions,
of past generations. His story might be called the last chapter
in the history of the building of independent commonwealths in
our Republic. The men who wrought out the political existence
of Virginia called it, in their pride, "The Old Dominion." The
fundamental tenet of her political creed was that Virginia was
an independent state, which had entered, upon certain well defined
conditions, into a political union with other independent states.
It must be remembered, too, that democracy at that time was even
more of an experiment than it is today. Nor is democracy a fixed
governmental form. It is a principle which admits of many
forms of political expression. It is the expression of the will of
the people in some political form. The Virginia theory was, de-
mocracy in terms of state government, protected by a federal
union. Now Lee had imbibed this political doctrine with his
mother's milk, and inherited it in every corpuscle of his blood.
He was bound to it by every tie of tradition.
While Lee was growing up under the influences of his intense
inheritance of a long past, within the creative culture of an em-
phasized local consciousness, Abraham Lincoln was being molded
within the widened horizon and limitless plains of a new
America. Of obscure parentage, he had little consciousness of
37th Annum, Reunion
57
the past; precedents and conventionalities played little pari In
pointing the pathway of his personality. America, to him, w.t,
not defined in terms of stales, and the story of the struggle loi
freedom was not identified in his thought with the traditions of
a commonwealth. His soul, loo, bowed before an ideal of de-
mocracy, but it was not a democracy of the states, by the states,
and for the states. I ,ee was essentially a Virginian of Vir-
ginians. Lincoln was a man of (he people. When Lincoln talked
about the Union his consciousness knew no provincial barriers,
and the floodtide of Ins sympathies swept away constitutional
limitations and distinctions. "Union," upon the lips of Lee,
meant a united group of self-governing commonwealths. Lin-
coln's ideal was "a government of the people, by the people, for
the people." Lee's ideal was a government of the people, by the
states, for the people. Here, then, was an irrepressible conflict,
not simply between Iwo interpretations of our Constitution, but
between two ideals of democracy. For my present purpose I am
not concerned as to which was right. Character can never be
defined in terms of statutes and logic. Character is made out of
the magic mixture of the meaning of motives, and the convictions
of consciences. Many of the really great contests of the world
have been the clash of conflicting consciences. In 1861 Lee's
conscience pointed one way, Lincoln's another, and the "steel
which answered steel" was each tempered by the white heat of a
soul profoundly convinced of the righteousness of its conviction.
Today, as never before, we divide the world's work into special
tasks, and so are putting an ever increasing emphasis upon in-
tensive training and discipline for specific work. This is more
and more the trend of our educational processes. Thus are we
coming to test the quality of personality by professional or voca-
tional success. A great merchant, a great engineer, a great lawyer, a
great soldier, is a great man. This is far from being necessarily true.
This is to give a merely technical definition of a man's personal-
ity, within the necessary limitations of his profession or calling.
The possibilities of manhood are infinitely greater than any pro-
fession, and whenever a life can be defined in terms of a special
task it means the life has been narrowed and limited by that
task. Here, to my mind, is the deadly danger of any educational
purpose which limits itself to the task of making "lawyers,"
58
37th Annual Reunion
"merchants," 01 "engineers." Manhood is something too rich
and deep to find its full and complete expression in the forms of
any particular work. The purpose of the school should be, first,
l«> plow deep into the soul, releasing the wealth of its possible
powers of personality— developing manhood first— then train the
personality in the technique of a special expression. I am insist-
ing that a man should be bigger than a lawyer or a doctor, more
than a merchant, an engineer, or a preacher.
So, when we come to study the personality of Robert Edward
Lee, we note the fact that he was a soldier, but he was infinitely
more, he was a man. The greatest portion of his life found ex-
pression within the realm of military affairs. What was the
quality of manhood which found expression in the military life
of Leo? Acts in themselves are not right or wrong. To fight is
neither right nor wrong, in itself. The search for the moral
quality of a character must be made within the invisible realms
of the spirit. Would that modern pacifists could understand
this, and come to know that the palace of peace, for which good
men dream and pray, must be a "building not made with hands,"
but one which, if it is to be eternal, must have its foundation laid
deep in the spirits of men. Why do men fight ? This is the most
revealing question which can be asked. We will ask Lee that
question, and when a world of men can give his answer there
will be no more war. When Robert Edward Lee left his resigna-
tion at the War Department in Washington in 1861, and turned
old Traveler's head toward the hills of Virginia, we care little
about what was in the Constitution of the United States. We
want to know what was in the heart of Lee, for by the answer to
this question shall the verdict of history be rendered, We know
now that he abhorred slavery; that he loved the Union of his
fathers with passionate devotion; that while holding to the legal
right of secession, he contemplated the separation of the states as
nothing less than a tragedy ; that his sold was knit in a sacred
comradeship to his brother officers of the Army ; and that by his
accurate knowledge of both sections of our land from a military,
standpoint, he knew the South would fail in a military contest.
Yet, he has just refused the supreme command of the Armies of
the United States. He has turned his back upon honor, glory,
37th Annual Reunion
59
power, and is deliberately riding into the shadows of sorrow,
suffering, and humiliation.
What is in the heart of Lee? It is something that cannot be
measured nor weighed in the markets of the world. It is some-
thing that rust cannot consume, and thieves cannot break in and
steal. It is that eternal something which will walk through the
shadows of Gethsemane, along the Via Doloroso to a cross, where
it will die for others, Hut it will not stay dead. There is a
triumphant resurrection utterance which proclaims that unselfish
love lives forever.
Closely akin to the "Why did Lee fight" is the question "How
did Lee fight?" Indeed, the one determines the other, for what
a man does is but the expression of the deepest motive which
possesses him. It; is characteristic of Robert Edward Lee that,
having once determined for himself, with a soul purged of all
selfishness, where his pathway of duty led, he should follow it
with no halting hesitancy or troubled timidity. "Save in defense
of my native slate, I shall never draw my sword again," were
the pathetic words upon his lips as he bade farewell to the be-
loved comrades of the old army. Now, with the coming of an
invading army, the cause to which that sword had been dedicated
calls to him. With clearness of conviction and cleanness of con-
science it is given in whole-hearted devotion to the defense of
Virginia.
For four long years now the Lee-life finds its expression in
battle, and by the spirit in which he fought shall he be judged.
Let me repeat that Lee believed in his cause. This is essential to
any large accomplishment. Not until a cause can challenge with
completeness of confidence every faculty of the man can it sum-
mon the devotion of every impulse and power of the personality.
This is the essence of unselfishness, that the thought of self shall
be lost in the consciousness of the cause. This, too, is an es-
sential element of personal power, that no faculty of the person-
ality shall be deflected from the prosecution of the larger pur-
pose in order to minister to the appetites and ambitions of the
self.
This will account, I think, for that matchless daring of Lee,
and for his almost unequalled ability to surcharge his men with
f»()
37th Annual Reunion
his nun spirit. Let me quickly give two instances. June 1st
ltSf >- '"'",,,,1 |,,:, -,,1, E. Johnston being wounded. General Lee
took command of the Army of Northern Virginia. McClellan
had pushed Johnston back to the defenses around Richmond, and
was only waiting for McDowell to arrive with his forces 'from
Fredericksburg to complete the capture of the city. Stonewall
Jackson had just completed his brilliant Valley Campaign. Lee
ostentatiously sends reinforcements to Jackson in the Valley,
while secretly he orders this immortal commander to his side.'
This feint at reinforcing Jackson alarms Washington, and Mc-
Dowell turns back for its defense. At the very moment that
Banks and Freemont were fortifying against Jackson's expected
attack, this thunderbolt of war strikes as out of a clear sky the
right of McClellan's army, turns it and thus threatens his com-
munications. The siege becomes a retreat. The moment this is
accomplished, Lee once again detaches Jackson, sending him to
Gordonsville to meet the advance of Pope. On his way he
strikes once again his old antagonist, Banks, at Cedar Mountain
with such terrific force that all Washington is thrown into a
panic. Now McClellan's army is rapidly decreased for the de-
fense of the capital. This also releases Lee. With that quick
decision and celerity of movement, which made up for the dis-
proportions in numbers, he moves to crush Pope before Mc-
Clellan can save him. Jackson captured Manassas Junction, thus
placing himself in the rear of Pope's army. Here, as he said, "he
held Pope's arm until Lee appeared," and their united armies
won the second Confederate victory on the field of Manassas.
Colonel Henderson, the famous British military critic, speaking
of this achievement, quotes VonMoltke as saying, "The junction
of two armies on the field of battle is the highest achievement of
military genius." Then he adds, "If this be true, the campaign
against Pope has never been surpassed. Tried by this test alone,
Lee stands out as one of the greatest soldiers of all times. Three
other times he accomplished this feat. Against McClellan at
Gaines' Mill, Burnside at Fredericksburg, and Hooker at Chan-
cellorsville." Here the daring of Lee, born out of his confidence
in his cause and utter unconsciousness of self, enabled him to
summon every resource of himself and his followers for the ac-
complishment of victory.
37th Annual Reunion
(.1
He had the ability to a marked degree of translating himself
into his followers, and to possess them with the passion of his
own spirit. At Spotsylvania Courthouse in 1864 Lee had been
forced, in the formation of his line of battle, to make a danger-
ous salient in the improvised earthworks, which he had hastily
thrown up, in the very center of his line. During the night Grant
transferred Hancock's whole corps to this point, and at early
dawn, by a magnificent attack, (hey broke Lee's line at this critical
point. Like the rush of maddened waters pouring through a
breach in a dam, the rush of Federal soldiers poured through this
breach in the Con federate defense, and threatened the very
existence of the Army of Northern Virginia. I have stood at
just this point, known to the old Confederates as "The Bloody
Angle," and imagined that scene. Lee has summoned John B.
Gordon with his command to meet this supreme emergency. As
this intrepid leader dashes forward ahead of his troops, he sees
General Lee, himself, turn the head of old Traveller toward the
enemy, and divines his purpose to lead the charge. He has
caught hold of the bridle of the old warhorse and, with all the
passionate love for bis great leader in the tones of his voice, he is
saying, "General Lee, you must go to the rear," and then, turn-
ing to his troops, which, by this time, had arrived, he shouted to
them, "Virginians and Georgians, is it necessary for General
Lee to lead you in this charge?" And there came back like the
thunder of Heaven above the roar of battle, "General Lee to the
rear and we will retake those works." General Hancock, you
need not blush for the defeat of your heroic soldiers today, for
when that tornado of ragged gray glory struck your lines, there
never marched an army on this continent which could have with-
stood that charge, for there was a Robert Edward Lee in every
gray jacket which fought that day.
But it was not simply on the battlefield that this gift of Lee,,
to surcharge men with his own spirit, was shown. I sometimes
try to picture the return of the Armies of the Confederacy to
their homes after Appomattox. They had been subjected for
four years to the deadly and deadening temptations of the camp.
There had been years of bloodshed, calculated to brutalize their
natures. They went back to ruined fortunes, and often to the
62
S7'\ K \\ Annual Reunion
* slu ' s ol ll "" I es, with a sickening sense of defeat and in-
justice. They wenl back to the dark days of "Reconstruction,"
worse than war. I wonder sometimes that civilization, itself, had
""' ""-'.ken under the strain, and that anarchy and chaos did not
seize (lie reins and drive us to a social ruin. But, instead of
that, these men went home to build this miracle of a New South.
Glimpse for a moment in imagination its industrial glory. Listen
to the buzz of the bands and the whir of the wheels of its great
factories. Catch the rhythmic rumble of its industrial progress,
visualize the beauty of its homes, the ever expanding efficiency
of its splendid schools and colleges, and the lifted domes and
pointed spires of its churches. Far be it from me, by word or
gesture, to discount the quality of the character of these marvel-
ous sons and daughters of the South, and yet I am profoundly
convinced that in this matchless industrial and social triumph of
the South, there was a reincarnation of the spirit of Lee, such as
won victory out of defeat at the "Bloody Angle" at Spotsylvania
Courthouse.
I am insisting that a man's life does not consist of his words
and acts, nor even the incidents which make up its experiences,
but that the life finds in word and act its mode of expression and
that its incidents and experiences serve to summon the personal
powers into expression. So we have seen the Lee-life in battle,
translating its full force into the accomplishment of victory'.
He presents the well nigh unique expression of a spirit which, in
the heated and heroic atmosphere of battle, rose above all the
brutal passions of a fight. He freed himself from the prejudices
of partisanship, and so mastered material force that he made war
without the bitterness of hatred. Over and over again he was
the victor without vindictive vengeance. Twice he led a hungry
and impoverished army upon a victorious invasion of the enemy's
country, and then retreated leaving no ruins to mark the wake of
his way.
But the Lee-life is yet to stand its severest test. It is in the
hour of defeat that the soul of a man is most clearly revealed.
Stripped of all defense of authority, unadorned by the glory of
power, it must bear, and bear alone, the humiliation of failure,
and be tested not by what it has done, but by what it is. We are
37t i i Annum, Reunion
63
coming to understand that Appomattox was a crisis in American
history. The Army of Northern Virginia had reached the limit
of its power of resistance, but a great section of this nation still
remained militant and unconquered. The Southern Confederacy
might still maintain its armed contention in scattered guerrilla
warfare for many yens. I ,ee was the only living man who
could bring peace to America, So completely had he gained the
loving confidence oT the Southern people, that he was the only
man who could surrender the Confederacy. He faced the issue
without flinching. Mis ideal for democracy — the Virginia ideal
— had failed. But the question remained, should all hope of the
maintenance of any democratic union in this country fail also?
The contemplation of the continuation of the struggle by ir-
regular warfare, carried on by roving bands and scattered groups
of uncontrolled and undisciplined guerrillas, with its inevitable
cruelties and wreckage, Idled the soul of Lee with horror. His
decision, expressed in (lie words, "We have conducted this war
as a Christian people we have submitted our contention to the
arbitrament of arms and have failed— now I shall surrender this
army as a Christian soldier" saved this republic and was Robert
Edward Lee's contribution of peace and freedom to the children
of America. In 1917-18 when the sons of the blue and of the
gray kept step beneath the starry light and flaunting folds of one
flag, permeated with the one purpose to make its ideal of de-
mocracy regnanl among the nations of the world, it was because
Lee, with the vision of a statesman and the unselfishness of a
patriot, surrendered at Appomattox.
And now he turns old Traveler's head away from the battle-
field. It must have been with a breaking heart that he rode
through the silent ranks of his war-worn followers, and saw on
those upturned faces of devotion the tears wash their pathways
down those powder-stained cheeks. But he rides on with the
revelation of a radiant ideal leading him and the passion of a
great purpose permeating his soul. He rides past the alluring
offers of ease and comfort, honor and glory, to the altar of
sacrificial love. He rides on to the little impoverished college in
the rock-ribbed hills of Virginia, with the words, "I have a self-
imposed task. As I have led the sons of the South upon the field
of battle, so must I now lead them in the paths of peace."
TxU
64
37tu Annual Reunion
I have often thought in reverent love that there was a striking-
analogy between those last years of Lee at Washington College
and the forty days of the Master's life after Golgotha. How the
hearts of those young men must have "burned within them as he
talked with them by the way," interpreting to them the events of
war in terms of peace — finding in the shadows of the defeat of
war the star of hope with its radiant promise and prophesy of the
triumphs of peace. And I am conscious of no irreverance in say-
ing that in those last days he seems to me to stand as on the brow
of a mountain, saying to these young builders of a New South,
"Go back into life and teach and live what I have taught and lived,
and lo, I am with you always."
The Chairman :
It is my privilege now to introduce to you one in whose veins
flows the blood of some of Charlottesville's most distinguished
and beloved citizens — one who worthily fills the chair to which
General Lee brought alike fame and honor, Dr. Henry Louis
Smith, President of Washington and Lee University, who will
present the statue on behalf of that great philanthropist, Paul
Goodloe Mclntire.
Dr. Smith :
In the name of Mr. Paul Mclntire, a loving son of the Old
Dominion, now back in his boyhood's home, I present to his
city of Charlottesville this stately figure of General Lee on
Traveler. Here in the center of the city's social and economic
life may it stand forever to recall the glory of the unforgotten
Past, to lift the busy Present to higher levels of patriotism and
self-sacrifice, and to teach to endless generations of the Future
the lofty lessons of his defeated yet triumphant life.
I do not wonder that this Virginia gentleman was and is and
shall forever be the idol of every Southern heart — aye, of ev-
ery human heart, North, South, East, and West. In his unique
and matchless character were distilled and concentrated all
those traditions and characteristics that constituted the moral
greatness of the Old South at its best estate.
Its unusual combination of manly courage and womanly
3/Tii Annum, REUNION
65
tenderness, its habitual gentleness toward the weak and help-
less, its lofty sense of personal dignity, personal honor, and
personal integrity, its passionate love of home and children, its
chivalrous exaltation of womanhood, its deep and fervid re-
ligious piety — all these seemed to burst into full flower and
perfect fruitage in the charactei ol the South's ideal hero, just
before the tree of civilization which bore such wondrous fruit
was uprooted and destroyed forever by the earthquake and
tempest of war.
It is not my purpose lo speak today of Lee the Soldier, the
hero of a hundred battlefields, the demigod of war, but of Lee
the hero of peace, the Christian saint, the pacemaker between
North and South, the educational statesman, the victor over
defeat, whose life-work after Appomattox, when all its mani-
fold results are dually summed up by Heaven's unerring cal-
culus, will outshine, outweigh, and outlast all the more spectac-
ular glories of his military career.
Thrice fortunate is the South, and through her the nation
and the world, thai whenever and wherever, through the long
ages of the future, she turns her eyes toward the stately figure
of her ideal hero, on the lofty pedestal of his ever-growing
fame, she sees floating over his head, as the one and only flag
of his unchanged and undivided allegiance, not the stars and
stripes which he so regretfully furled and laid for a time away,
nor the stars and bars, that hallowed flag of memory and tears,
which disappeared forever amid the battle-smoke of a hundred
fields of honor, but the starry banner of the Cross, that flag
that knows no North or South, no surrender or defeat, no
Gettysburg or Appomattox, that starry flag of the world's heart
and hope, that shall yet float in universal triumph over land
and sea.
In these troubled times of waning faith and restless uncer-
tainty, may Lee the Christian saint teach us and our children
this lofty lesson: that living, loving, personal faith in a living,
loving, personal God is at once the source and inspiration and
the measure of all true human greatness.
None but Lee the Christian after four years of war's devil-
ish cruelties, when his armies had been crushed and his home-
66
37tii Annual Reunion
land swepl by fire and drenched in blood, could say of his ene-
mies "I have never seen the day when I did not pray for them."
It was due to his overwhelming- influence that the war ended
at Appomattox and the nation was spared the endless horrors
and hatreds of guerrilla warfare. To his efforts and example,
more than to those of any other leader, North or South, we
owe the obliteration in a single generation of sectional bitter-
ness, and the present harmony of our reunited nation under the
flag of our fathers.
To me this mounted figure recalls not the lurid splendor of
the battlefield, but that peaceful August day when Lee on
Traveler rode through these very streets on his way to Lexing-
ton. Turning his back on all offers of wealth and ease and
luxury at home and abroad, he dedicated his matchless life not
to the memories of the past but to the South of the future,
undertook the Herculean task of rebuilding Washington's bank-
rupt and looted institution, and sacrified his life that he might
teach the young men of his beloved South to solve the prob-
lems and bear the burdens of their harassed and stormy times.
Mounting his war-horse, Traveler, he rode alone four days
westward across the Blue Ridge and quietly entered upon the
most fruitful period of his eventful life.
With ceaseless toil and magnetic zeal and consummate abil-
ity and statesmanlike wisdom he added students, teachers,
buildings, and endowments to Washington's ancient founda-
tion, revolutionized the old classical curriculum, founded new
departments of English, Modern Languages, Applied Chemis-
try, and Physics, founded schools of Engineering, Law, Journ-
alism, and Commerce, saturated the institution with his spirit,
fixed for all time, we trust, its unique campus traditions of
chivalry, courtesy, and personal honor, and then, worn out by
his incessant labors, fell at his post from overwork, and be-
queathed to it his matchless example, his sacred dust, and his
incomparable name.
Thus like his Divine Exemplar on the hills of Galilee, he
sacrificed his mortal life that his life-work might through that
sacrifice become immortal, and taught to you and me and all
the generations following the glory of self-renunciation, of
3/Tir Annum, REUNION
(,/
fidelity to the duty of the hour at whatever cost of personal
sacrifice.
But greater to me than Lee the Soldier, or Lee the Educator,
is Lee the Victor over Defeat.
His gigantic efforts had come to nought, his military career
had ended in hopeless defeat, his mighty armies had been shat-
tered, scattered, defeated, surrendered, disbanded, the land he
fought so hard to save was overrun and subjugated, and he
himself, its adored leader, a paroled and disfranchised captive
of war, stripped of rank and power in an obscure mountain
village, was supervising the conduct and studies of a handful
of college boys.
Yet even then and there the majesty of his matchless char-
acter towered above the clouds of defeat and made his humble
dwelling place a sacred shrine. His defeat was but apparent.
Long since has the impartial verdict of the slow-moving years
crowned as the real victor of Appomattox not Ulysses S. Grant
and his swarming armies, but the undefeated spirit of Robert
E. Lee. His surrender was not temporary. Long since have
his enemies and detractors surrendered in their turn to this
hero of defeat. Mis name and fame are growing with every
passing year, their splendor heightened rather than obscured by
this dark background of failure and disaster.
What lesson can we of this generation learn from this amaz-
ing victory of the vanquished? Surely this — the essential and
eternal supremacy of the invisible things of the spirit over
those of time and sense; that real greatness is neither meas-
ured nor determined by the accident of success or failure but
solely by the spirit with which they are borne; that godlike
character may rise majestic over circumstances, however ad-
verse.
Would God such a spirit and such leadership were guiding
our storm-tossed nation and our storm-tossed world today.
Surely never were we in greater need of the sense of human
brotherhood, of the spirit of obedience to law, of the subordi-
nation of personal and national ambitions, to the welfare of
distressed and despairing humanity, and of the serene and un-
wavering faith and trust which upheld and steadied Lee and
68
37th Annual, Reunion
his associates In (hose days of disaster and defeat. Let us of
the New South, intoxicated with material prosperity and in-
creasing luxury, learn the supremacy of the things of the spirit
" ' ,)ln General Lee's example alone but from our own fa-
thers and mothers of 1865.
And let me as its most unworthy spokesman reaffirm what
the Old South believed with all its heart, and what the shades
of our mighty deed still teach from storied urn and monu-
mental granite, that all true greatness, whether of an individual
or of a nation, is always and forever moral, never merely or
mainly material. Our visible possessions, our houses and lands
our railways and factories, our cannon and battleships— these
are not the essentials of Christian civilization but only its tools
and trappings, already on their way to the scrapheap. Among
them national character rises like a marble shaft amid piles of
decaying rubbish.
National wealth may come and it may go. National power
may wax and it may wane. The passing centuries are forever
changing national customs of dress, architecture, government
and finance. But the great moral judgments of the world'
moral standards, moral laws, moral ideals— these stand un-
changed from age to age. No transient splendor of accumu-
lated wealth can ever make this land of ours truly great or even
truly rich. Our invisible assets must be estimated at their full
value. Civic honor and purity, height of national ideals, capac-
ity for heroism and self-sacrifice, commercial honesty and do-
mestic virtue, love of justice and sense of human brotherhood
—these cannot be measured by long lists of industrial enter-
prises, by millions or billions of accumulated capital, or even
by percentage ratios of literacy and illiteracy.
As we leave this Mount of Transfiguration and plunge once
more into the busy whirl of our amazing material development,
let us carry deeply graven on our hearts this solemn and awak-
ening truth: that the most momentous question which con-
fronts the New South of our day is not one of manufactures or
commerce or agriculture, not what we buy or make or sell, not
what we have, nor what we will get, but what we are and what
our children will become.
37t i i Annum, REUNION
W
The Chairman :
I am now about to perform a work of supererogation — to in
troduce to a Virginia audience Dr. Kdwin A. Alderman, who
needs no introduction to any audience, North or South.
Dr. Alderman :
Your Excellency, Confederate Veterans, Ladies and Gentlemen:
In behalf of the city of Charlottesville and the county of
Albemarle I accept al your hands, President Smith, as the rep-
resentative of Paul Goodloe Mclntire, a far-seeing and patriotic
citizen, this noble statue of Robert Edward Lee. I have the
honor to speak the deep gratitude of the people of this town and
county to the ^iver «.f this priceless gift. He has richly earned
the affection and gratitude of his fellow citizens. Here Robert
E. Lee si nil stand during (he ages at the center of their lives,
teaching, through the captivating medium of beauty, the ever-
lasting lesson of dignity and character, of valor and the life un-
selfish.
And now wh;it may I say of Robert E. Lee that all the world
has not better said? You have just heard a moving oration
celebrating the career and the qualities of the great warrior
statesman. There is no need that I should do other than ac-
cept with profound gratitude the statue itself. The fame of
Lee is so secure and so well lit up with history's everlasting
lamp that silence seems a fitter thing than speech. The South
has seen much of bitterness and wormwood in the decades that
intervene between Appomattox and this hour, but we should
never cease to be grateful to the God of nations that he had the
people of the South enough in his care to choose for their
leader this stainless man "whose strength was as the strength
of ten because his heart was pure," so large and ample in na-
ture, so gifted with royal genius — even the warrior's genius —
and yet so merciful, so sweet-tempered and withal so dowered
with pity and understanding.
It was Washington's all cloudless glory to found a nation.
So much cannot be said of Lee. Yet he has done even more
than his great prototype. He has become a majestic ideal to a
whole land, incarnating their aspirations of manliness and
70
37th Annum, Reunion
realizing their dreams of right living. If Lee had been other
that! he was in 1865, if he had been smitten with some madness
for glory like the great Emperor of the French, we might not
have to tell our proudest story of weary men returning to find
bread to eat, clean in honor if broken in heart, but rather some
mad orgy of despair and revolution.
But this man who stood for us in the great struggle did not
spell glory out of life, but duty, and he saw God in his Heaven
and in all the wide earth. So our hero is not some strange
portent, half demon and half angel, "in whose brain the eagles
of inspiration built their eyries and in whose breast hissed the
serpents of ambition," as Heine said of Napoleon, but a great,
beautiful, resolute man unspoiled by victory, undismayed by
disaster and counting himself but little if the deed were done
worthily.
I repeat that God was good and full of thought for his peo-
ple to set in the forefront of their lives so faultless and ample
a man, and surely the people of this community may count
themselves fortunate in having here before their very eyes for
all time so glorious a presentment of human virtue and great-
ness.
Th3 Chairman :
To unveil the monument, we have called a little child, whose
purity and innocence is a fit type of her great ancestor. I re-
quest his Excellency, the Governor of Virginia, Paul G. Mc-
Intire, the sculptor Leo Lentelli, who with Major General Wil-
liam B. Freeman, head of the Confederate Veterans, Colonel C.
B. Linney, Commander of the Grand Camp of Virginia, Com-
rade Bartlett Boiling, and Colonel Carter R. Bishop, as escort
of honor to accompany this young lady to perform the pleasing
duty of unveiling this monument, but before so doing [placing
the young girl on the tabic in front of the speaker] I wish to
present to you the great-granddaughter of the greatest man
who ever lived.
[This was the most dramatic moment in a day of moving
scenes. A great demonstration ensued. The veterans rose to
their feet and cheered, while the little lady, uncoached, waved
her hand to the multitude.]
37TH Annum, Ki-hnion
71
The Chairman :
A benediction is a form oi words coming from the heart
which dismisses an audience with (lie blessings of Almighty
God. Some lives are ;i benediction in themselves and the gen-
tleman whom I now presenl to yon, whose own life has been a
benediction, will close these ceremonies. I call upon the Rev.
Giles B. Cooke, \).\)., the lasl surviving member of General
Lee's staff, to dismiss us
Dr. Cooke:
Almighty Sovereign, God of Might
Who counts die sparrows in their flight,
Look down with love, and comfort give
These comrades who live
And gather here to honor pay
Beloved ones who wore the gray.
( ) Pal her, Son, and Holy Ghost!
Strengthen the fragment of that host
Who fought for what they deemed was right,
Leaving a record fair and bright,
Unsullied by dark deeds of sin.
And though they lost, 'twas theirs to win
A crown that will a glory be
To all their loved posterity.
Triune of love and life and might
Teach us, O Lord! to do the right,
And let thy tender love to-day,
Rest on those men who wore the grey.
The quoted lines are by Frances Goggin Maltby.
In the evening a reception to Veterans, Sons of Veterans,
official ladies and invited guests was given in the Memorial
Gymnasium in the grounds of the University of Virginia,
After the reception there was a grand ball in the same build-
ing, in which Veterans took part with youthful enthusiasm.
72
37th Annual, Reunion
IV
FINIS
^ At 9 o'clock of the morning of Thursday, May 22, the
Grand Camp held its final meeting, at which Commander C B
Linney presided. The reports of the several standing commit-
tees were presented and disposed of, after which the Camp
went into the election of officers.
The following were chosen:
Grand Commander— C. B. Linney, of Charlottesville.
First Lieutenant Commander— James P. Whitman, of Horse-
pen.
Second Lieutenant Commander— C. W. Kurtz, of Winches-
ter.
Third Lieutenant Commander— W. P. Nye, of Radford.
Quartermaster-General— S. W. Paulette, of' Farmville.
Inspector-General— James P. Whitman, of Horsepen.'
Chaplain-General— The Rev. James C. Reed, of Lynchburg.
Surgeon-General— Dr. George W. Crozier, of Roanoke.
Adjutant-General and Chief of Staff— Carter R. Bishop, of
Petersburg.
Assistant- Adjutant General— Robert Gilliam, of Petersburg.
Following the election of officers, Commander Linney re-
turned thanks for another expression of confidence in him.
"Your coming and presence among us has been as a Heaven-
sent benediction, and in the name of Mr. Paul Mclntire and
the people of the city we thank you. We wish you a safe re-
turn home, and many years of health and happiness."
^ Resolutions were adopted thanking the people of Charlottes-
ville for the princely hospitality extended the Veterans during
their stay here; the good women of the city, for their kindness
and attention; the railroads for reduced rates offered; and the
Boy Scouts and other organizations who contributed to the
happiness and comfort of the old soldiers.
The final session of the twenty-ninth annual reunion of the
Virginia State Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, was
37TH Annual REUNION
held this morning beginning al 10 o'clock .ii the Gleason Moid.
and State Commander !,<■<■ 0, Miller, of Richmond presided.
A special feature of the meeting was the presence in the ball
of a score or more of S] ion and tnaids-of -honor of the va-
rious camps throughout the State, and the Sons gave them a
cordial, Virginia welcome.
Officers for the ensuing yeai were then elected as follows:
State Commander K'. A. Gilliam, of Montvale.
Brigade Commanders First, John R. Saunders, of Richmond;
second, H. E. Hagan, Jr., of Richmond; third, R. G. Larkin,
of Roanoke; fourth, Homer Richey, of Charlottesville; fifth,
E; P. Francis, of Madison.
The convention adjourned sine die after passing resolutions
extending thanks to the local community for courtesies ex-
tended, the Daughters <>f the Confederacy for their indispens-
able aid and CO Operation; the business men of the city for the
time given and attention shown to visitors, and especially for
the use of automobiles in accommodating the delegates and vis-
itors.
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Open Library
American Libraries
TV News
Understanding 9/11